


And Then You Get Back Up Again

by hopelessheathen (ElspethMcGillicuddy)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergent, Cas is involved in the supernatural, Cas was born human, Ex-hunter Dean, Gen, Happy Ending, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Lawyer Sam, M/M, No angels, Reunion, Sam POV, Sam is a dick in the beginning, Sam never left Stanford, Sam/Jess divorce, alcoholic Sam, doctor cas, established destiel but the main focus is the reconciliation of the brothers, low-level homophobia in the form of stereotyping, redemption arc, reference to a past suicide attempt, temporary suspicions of rape but no actual rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 47,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25870522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElspethMcGillicuddy/pseuds/hopelessheathen
Summary: Sam decides to reconnect with family for the first time in eleven years, and he’s shocked to find Dean is now married. But Dean’s out-of-character behavior and Cas’ evasive answers to simple questions soon lead Sam to believe there is something shady going on under their wholesome façade. Once proof falls into his hands, he knows he’s going to have to do something drastic if he wants to rescue his brother.Sam is going to have to murder Dean’s husband.
Relationships: Bobby Singer & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 181
Kudos: 488
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	1. The Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I love Sam in canon, but I love watching Jared play an asshole even more. Demon-blood-addict-Sam was awesome, and soulless-Sam was the best. The Sam in this fic is not on the same scale of douchebaggery as those others, but I did douche him up quite a lot in the beginning, so turn back now if it’s going to bother you to see Sam being a self-centered twat for the first 25% of the story and a despairing puddle of guilt and regret for the remaining 75%, ha ha ha.
> 
> Finally, thank you to [Tlakht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tlakht/pseuds/tlakht) for your help with writing motivation and summary workshopping! <3

It’s late into the second day of his drive when Sam’s unease over the idea of showing up unannounced after eleven years of radio silence finally overrides his nerves. Attention still half on the mostly-empty Interstate 80, with nothing but rocks, short prairie grass, and the occasional semi truck passing by on either side, he dials the number and puts the phone to his ear, adrenaline rushing through his veins.

Miraculously, someone picks up.

“Singer’s Towing and Auto Repair.”

The sound of a voice he hasn’t heard since high school hits him with an unexpected wave of relief and nostalgia all mixed up with refreshed grief. He may have lost everyone else in his life, but Jess couldn’t take  _ every  _ friend in the divorce.

Assuming he still has the right to call Bobby a friend.

“Hi, Bobby, it’s Sam. Winchester.” He grimaces as he gives his long-abandoned surname, but he can’t be sure Bobby will recognize him otherwise. “How, uh, how have you been?”

“Sam.” There’s a long pause, and Sam drums his fingers nervously against the steering wheel. The silence might just be surprise, but there’s probably a better chance it’s irritation. Scrub brush passes by, followed by barren rock outcroppings as he waits for a response. Wyoming’s truly desolate.

Finally, Bobby lets out a sigh into the receiver.

“Can’t say I expected to hear from you after so long. You, uh, get caught up in funky town?”

It’s weirdly shocking to hear the old hunting code. He hasn’t thought about it since he was a teenager.

“No, no emergency, just—” His voice cracks, vision blurring as he forces back unexpected tears. He’s been like this for days, falling to pieces at the drop of a hat. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but the fact that Bobby cares enough to ask—he clears his throat, pushing down his emotion and trying to sound natural. “Just been a while. Wondering if… uh, well, I just haven’t… I kinda thought I’d like to drop by, if that’s ok. For old times’ sake.”

“That’s fine. You know I told you boys when you were kids that you could always come by when you needed it, and I meant that.” Sam’s hit with a rush of gratitude and wipes his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Bobby has always been a master of reading between the lines without any open dissection of feelings.

He breathes out in a rush of air. “Great, that’s—that’s great. I’m halfway through Wyoming right now, should hit South Dakota in a couple of hours.”

“You’re  _ where _ ? Oh hell, don’t tell me you’re on the way to Sioux Falls.”

Sam’s heart drops. “Is that a problem?”

“Well, only if you wanna actually find  _ me,  _ versus the old place,” Bobby says dryly. “I moved. Sold the scrap yard coming up on four years ago.”

“Oh.” He feels a pang of regret. He knows it’s stupid to have expected no changes after eleven years. He’s certainly gone through plenty of changes of his own. It’s just that when he made the decision not to keep in touch, he’d somehow still pictured Bobby’s place continuing on without him indefinitely.

“So, uh, where are you now?”

“Grand Lake, Colorado. Tiny little town, coupla’ hours northwest of Denver, up by Rocky Mountain National Park.”

“Oh, wow. Colorado. Uh, ok.”

“And listen. Your brother’s here too. I’m guessing you didn’t know that, if you didn’t know  _ I’d _ moved.”

His brother is alive. It’s something he should’ve thought about before now, probably, but with the job and the Jess situation and everything else that’s been going on, he hasn’t allowed himself to really question it. All the same, it eases a weight off his shoulders to hear it.

“Yeah, no, it’s been a while since I—it’s been a while.”

He hasn’t looked up either of them since he left, not Bobby or Dean, and not Dad either. He’d thought about it these last few years; enough time had passed that he was no longer angry. He could be generous and forgive his family for the faults of their past. But that was when he’d thought he had plenty of time to decide if he wanted to reach out. Now that Jess has left him, he can’t help but grimace at the idea.

Dean will take one look at Sam’s heartbroken face, and none of his achievements since leaving will mean a thing. He’ll see nothing but vindication for Dad’s crazy bullshit and trivialize the pain of Jess’ betrayal by framing it as “proof” that his attempt at living a civilian life was doomed from the start. It’s the worst possible time for a reconciliation.

“Yeah, I bet,” Bobby grumbles, grumpy and disapproving. “You make sure to call him before you come. He’s got stuff he needs to tell you about, and it ain’t my place to do it for him. But he deserves a heads up, you follow me?”

“Yes, sir. Sure thing, Bobby.”

“Now hang up and pay attention to the road already. I’ll text you the address.”

Bobby ends the call with his customary bluntness, and Sam blinks at the phone before lowering it to his lap.

He doesn’t want to call Dean. It’s a little frustrating that visiting Bobby means he’s going to be forced into the position of defending his decisions yet again.

He tries to remind himself that he doesn’t need to justify anything.

He’d tried hundreds of times to explain why they needed to get out of the life, but Dean never understood. If Sam hadn’t committed all the way to leaving, Dean would’ve been riding him and stalking him incessantly. He didn’t even have the choice to stay available for emergencies—neither of the elder Winchesters had ever been above using guilt-trips as a manipulation tactic. Hell, if Dad gave the order, Dean might have even actively sabotaged Sam’s efforts to get an education and to put down roots with Jess. He wouldn’t put it past them. It was a hard choice to make, but cutting them out completely was the better way. Sam still believes that. There’s not a doubt in his mind.

He fidgets, twirling the phone in his hand with his thumb.

He really doesn’t want to deal with the inevitable long-simmering shit-fit about having run off to Stanford, cutting all contact, ditching his old phone, changing his name—as if the Winchester legacy of petty crime and grave desecration is something he ought to be proud of.

Knowing Dean, he’ll latch on to Sam like a remora all over again, try to bully him into coming back or into apologizing to John. Sam has enough misery on his plate as it is. He doesn’t need more pressure on him when he’s already hurting and vulnerable. Hasn’t he lost enough? Isn’t it enough to lose his marriage without also being expected to toss away his job, his home, his reputation, and possibly his life for every asshole who doesn’t know how to salt their own freakin’ door? Hasn’t he given enough already, sacrificed his entire childhood to the hunt already, without also giving up his entire adulthood, too?

There’s only so long he can prolong the inevitable, though. It’s too bad he couldn’t ever rely on Dean to just be supportive and leave it at that. Dean, and behind him, Dad, have never understood when to stop demanding more and more and more.

Setting his jaw and already bracing himself for what he knows will end in angry shouting, Sam reaches for the phone and, after only a second’s hesitation, dials the number he’s been avoiding all these years.

“Hey-oo, Josh speaking!”

He falters for a second, foot lifting off the gas only momentarily. A single car passes him on the left and disappears slowly into the distance, leaving him alone on the road again.

“Is—Is Dean there?”

“Who?”

“Dean.”  _ Winchester,  _ he wants to add, but longstanding grudge or not, he doesn’t want to screw things up for his brother. Whoever this Josh is, he might know him by an alias instead.

“No Deans here, dude.”

“Whose phone is this?”

“Mine, and I don’t know any Dean, man. I think you got the wrong number.”

“Are you… oh.” It  _ used to be _ the right number, he knows that, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he might not be the only one who changed his number after their separation.

Somehow, the thought stings.

“Sorry, man.”

“No, it’s fine. Thanks.”

He hangs up and stares at the road ahead of him for another mile, phone held absently in one hand against his chin.

He should call Bobby back for Dean’s new number. Bobby had said Dean was staying with him, hadn’t he? So they must keep in at least semi-regular contact. There’s no reason he couldn’t just call Bobby again and ask for it right now.

But Bobby had sounded unimpressed with him already. Sam doesn’t even want to think about how he’ll sound if Sam admits to not even having a contact method for Dean anymore. It’s a little embarrassing, after all that. It’s going to be hard enough to face the impending argument over his permanent departure from the hunting world without handing over any more ammunition.

No, Sam will just surprise Dean when he gets there, if Bobby hasn’t mentioned it to him by then anyway. After all, what does Dean really need a heads-up for anyway? He’s had eleven years to get over Sam’s taking a stand—what good is another 12 hours going to do him? They’ll have it out when he gets there, Dean’ll shout and sulk and be pissed for a while, and then they’ll be over it. And before that, Sam will have one more night to get it together and plan out exactly how he wants to deal with it.

~

Grand Lake, Colorado, population 500, turns out to be a touristy little hick town in the Rockies, low-budget but rustically pretty. The climate’s subalpine, a refreshingly cool 71 degrees even now in mid-July. Short deciduous trees speckle the slopes within town limits, freshly green with summer foliage, a welcome break from the endless conifers on the hours-long drive up. Snow-capped mountains cut sharp into the blue sky in all directions, providing scenic backdrops to the wide empty straight-aways.

Everything on Main Street is either a lodge or lodge-styled, emphasis on the exposed wood. Western-style facades make the buildings look taller than they really are. A covered wooden boardwalk shades a few scattered window shoppers eyeing hand-carved wooden bear sculptures and over-priced hummingbirds made of glass. Big decorative rocks mark out the boundaries of gravel parking lots, and hand-painted signs advertise cabins, snowmobiles, and canoes for rent. He passes a Lakeview General Store, the Grand Lake Historical Society, and a tiny florist shop called The Stalk Market, before finding himself immediately outside town again on the side opposite from where he came in.

“Damn small town,” he mutters to himself, trying to peer through the forest that comes right up to the road, looking for side streets. By the time he finds one, he realizes he’s gone too far and has to double back into the ‘town’ proper again, slowly trying each one-lane road of unpainted asphalt until he finds a dubious dirt lane with the proper signage.

The address in Bobby’s text leads him to a cheery little house, all clean bare logs behind a gravel driveway and a bed of red geraniums. It’s so disconnected from what he remembers of Bobby that he wonders for a second whether he’s got the wrong address after all, but then he sees the tow truck parked out to the side beneath some poplars and that settles it.

The sound of the house’s front door slamming greets him as he gets out of the car, and a familiar figure approaches in a trucker hat.

“Hey, Bobby.” Sam smiles nervously.

“Sam.” Bobby’s gruff, muted nod is the same as ever, though the gray in his beard betrays the decade Sam’s missed. They hug, an awkward one-armed pat on the back. Somehow it isn’t quite the homecoming Sam had hoped.

“So this is an unexpected reunion. What spurred this little drop in?” Bobby asks after pulling back to a predictable manful distance.

“I, uh, I’ve been thinking about the past. Changes, you know. Life stuff.” He itches to tell Bobby about Jess. He wants to spill everything in big painful heap, lay out all of his hopes and efforts, all the work he put into their lives together and the heartbreak he got in return, but he can’t do it out here on the front lawn, in full view of the neighbors and street. It’s still too raw.

“Changes, huh?”

“Yeah. But what about you, in Colorado now? I never thought you’d leave that old place!” He forces a smile. He wishes Bobby had told him before selling it, but it’s not like he’d left any contact info, so he can’t exactly say as much.

“Well, your brother settled here first. I just followed him, seeing as I don’t got much family left outside of you two. Speakin’ of which,” Bobby looks at him askance, “you wanna explain the decade of radio silence? Dean and I both tried calling you after you left only to find out your number’d been changed.”

“I’m sorry, Bobby. I just… there was Dad, y’know? And Dean was just repeating his crap like it was gospel. I needed some time.”

“Eleven years is a hell of a long time, Sam.” Bobby’s disappointment is palpable. Sam shifts restlessly under the weight of it, abruptly annoyed at the implication. He came here for support in his moment of greatest vulnerability, not to be dragged over the coals yet again for never being good enough.

“Well, not all of us can be so blasé about living off stolen credit cards and con jobs,” he says testily. “Some of us actually need to work for an honest living. It’s not like I had a lot of free time.”

He realizes a moment too late that Bobby looks pissed.

“Oh, well, sorry to get in the way of your big important life, Sam! Maybe you’d better get on back to it, if it’s so damn busy you can’t even pick up a phone in eleven years!”

His heart sinks into his stomach. He has nowhere else to go, and no one left to turn to, totally alone in the world if Bobby throws him out now, before he’s even stepped foot in the house.

“Bobby, no, I’m sorry. God. I’m so sorry. I just—” He clenches his jaw, eyes burning for a second, and deflates. He has to say it. “I’m a little sensitive right now, that’s all. I just—I just signed divorce papers last week. My wife left me. Said I wasn’t ‘emotionally available,’ and now…”

It’s a simplification of a whole lot of lengthy complaints she made in the months leading up to her actually leaving him, but he can’t go into it. He still doesn’t even understand it. Or maybe he’s afraid to understand it. There’s always that.

Bobby, still rankled but expression softening a bit, assesses the misery in Sam’s eyes for a good minute and a half before finally settling into a sigh, hands in his pockets.

“Condolences.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

They stand outside in the mild summer sun, cool breeze coming down off the surrounding snowy caps, quiet and separated from the civilized world beyond the mountain ranges.

Bobby finally breaks the silence.

“Well, let’s get you inside. You can stow your stuff in my spare room. Get some coffee in you.”

Sam feels like he can breathe again. He looks up with a weak smile. “Booze?”

“Got that, too. C’mon.”

**~**

Normal families fall out of contact all the time. Look at Sam’s coworkers; most of them see their parents maybe once every three years, and god knows if they ever even think about their siblings. It’s normal. It’s fine. The expectations the Winchester family grew up with, Dean’s obsessive need to always be checking on Sam’s safety every day—those were weird and fucked up. Keeping space and distance between family members is normal, and while Sam’s choice to go no-contact might have been hard on all of them, it was a necessary part of setting normal, healthy boundaries.

He just wishes Bobby would cool off enough to see it that way.

“So. Divorced,” Bobby says too nonchalantly over beers at the kitchen table. “S’posed to be you get married before that’s a thing.”

He’s not looking at Sam, instead feigning interest in the bent tab on his open can, but Sam isn’t fooled. He surrenders with a bow of his head.

“Yeah. Six years back.”

“You didn’t call Dean, at the least?”

“It was an elopement.” Sam picks at a scratch on the table and tries to huff a laugh, avoiding eye contact. “Not like there was anything for him to do. Stand next to me, or whatever.”

Bobby takes a long drink. “He tried calling  _ you _ when  _ he _ got hitched. Spent days trying to figure out whether you’d changed your name. Looking for forwarding addresses, phone numbers, email, workplace or anything. Wouldn’t shut up about it for over a week.”

Sam leaps at the chance for a topic change.

“Dean’s married?”

Bobby’s eyes narrow, fixed on him directly now. “You better not be telling me you didn’t talk to him when you—”

The sound of the front door slamming open interrupts them. A voice breaks through from the living room, clear as day, and ground-shaking in its familiarity.

“Bobby! You shoulda been there today, Garth was changing the oil on this old Chevy when this squirrel comes flying out—”

Dean turns the corner into the kitchen, posture confident and relaxed, only to freeze up when he sees Sam and stops in shock.

He looks different, but really good—filled out, for sure, all healthy muscle and genuine comfort in his own skin instead of the bluffing swagger that used to characterize him in his early twenties. His expression is both guarded and alarmed, eyes wide, but Sam didn’t miss the smile on his face for the split second before he’d registered Bobby’s visitor.

Bobby sighs. Sam had almost forgotten he was there.

“You didn’t call him.”

“Sam.” Dean almost looks afraid.

Sam slowly gets up from the chair, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Hey, Dean.” He reaches out to invite a hug. Dean doesn’t react, which hurts, and Sam’s about to lower his arms, shame-faced, until Bobby breaks in with his usual bluntness.

“Sam got divorced and is here to lick his wounds.”

Like magic, Dean’s expression melts into sympathy and he steps forward into Sam’s shaking open arms.

“Aw, hell. Sorry to hear that, dude.”

It’s a cursory hug, not the back-pounding, clinging thing Sam had somehow expected, but it’s a relief all the same. He feels his eyes prick.

This is all he’s been waiting for.

**~**

They sit on the steps in Bobby’s backyard, watching the chipmunks dig through scattered piles of pine cones in the cool late afternoon sun. It’s got to be around 5:00pm or so, and Bobby’s gone inside to take a shower and clear out the spare room for Sam.

Sam rolls his bottle of El Sol between his palms, wiping the condensation around his fingers in the cool air of the mountains. It’s not a drink he particularly enjoys, but they ran out of cans of Bud an hour ago.

“Six years of marriage,” he says, glad that Dean keeps his eyes on the vermin and not him. It’s hard enough to talk about this as it is. “I come home to find her closet cleared out, books gone, movies, her grandma’s antique dishes—nothing left but a note on the table saying she’s at her parents’ place and  _ ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ _ And even then, it wasn’t her calling; it was her lawyer.”

“Harsh.”

“He showed up at my office and personally served me with divorce papers. Like I would’ve refused to sign for receipt if she’d just mailed them.”

“Out of nowhere like that, huh?”

“No. No, it’s been—” Sam holds the damp bottle up between his eyes, trying to force his brow to relax. It’s already been days of tension headaches, and he’s just so tired. “—it’s been a mess for a while. She’s been unhappy. She’s always unhappy. I thought it was just hormones, PMS or something. I just—I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That sucks, man.”

“I know.” He takes a swig, washes it over his teeth before swallowing. The El Sol reminds him of staying at Bobby’s in his teens and drinking with Dean in hotels. They’d been underage, of course, but it’s not like anyone was around to give a damn.

“Let’s talk about you instead. You got married, too? How’s that working out for you?”

“Oh, good, good…”

“Just good?” Sam asks dryly.

“Well,” Dean ducks his head and grins. It’s surreal, a shy kind of blushing smile Sam would swear he’s never seen on his brother before. “Okay. Awesome. I, uh, I got it pretty good here. House on the lake, decent mortgage, got our own pier for fishing off of. Steady job, and Cas—Cas is great. Really great. Saved my life, if you get right down to it.”

Sam huffs an incredulous laugh. “Man, that is a shock. I didn’t think you’d ever settle down.”

“I wasn’t planning to. I spent, what? Five, maybe six years on the move after you left. Dunno if I wouldn’t have kept going, if it weren’t for… Well, Cas kinda opened my eyes to some stuff. Other options. Better ones.”

“You sound happy.”

“I am.” A soft glow of genuine warmth and happiness suffuses his face. Sam watches it with own smile at first, but feels increasingly bitter and twisted inside, like maybe he’s going to be sick. He looks away.

“She must be really something. Can’t say I ever pictured you in a real relationship, what with the never-ending strings of one-night stands.” He drinks to shut himself up before his mouth can add anything he doesn’t really mean.

Dean looks down at his hands for a bit, fidgety. Sam starts to feel bad, like maybe his tone hadn’t been as light as he’d meant it to be, but he firmly reminds himself he hasn’t said anything that isn’t true.

“Um. Listen, Cas—Cas isn’t a she.”

Sam keeps looking at him, blank and uncomprehending at first. Dean glances at him out of the corner of his eye, shoulders tight, and abruptly he realizes Dean’s checking his reaction. The words finally register and he figures it out far later than he would’ve if he’d been talking to literally anyone but Dean.

“Dude. You married a guy?”

“Yeah.” Dean’s jaw is tense as he waits for a response. He’ll be waiting a while, Sam thinks in some bemusement, because Sam doesn’t really have any thoughts at all about that. It had literally never occurred to him as a possibility.

“You—oh, you’re…” Then it hits him. He narrows his eyes and starts to grin. “Oh. Wait, you’re pranking me, aren’t you? Is this to get back at me for the radio silence?”

“Dude. No.”

“So you’re really telling me—”

“Yeah. I’m into guys. Too. Or, or I have been. Since always.” He swallows. “I mean, it’s only Cas, now, so, I guess, ‘guy,’ singular—”

Sam stares at him longer, waiting for the ‘gotcha’ to come, but the longer he waits, the more uncomfortable Dean looks, so eventually he gives in.

“Ok. Well, I can’t say I saw it coming, but congratulations. I’m happy for you.” He tries to mean it. The words taste bitter on his tongue with his own marriage lying in shambles in front of him, but he’s careful not to let it color his tone. He’s a senior civil litigator at the biggest law firm in L.A. He’s used to perfectly disguised performative congratulations covering bitter jealousy. This isn’t difficult. This is just another Monday.

Dean, clearly having lost all ability to sense disingenuousness out here in the sticks, looks at him with hope in his shining eyes. “Yeah? You are?”

“’Course.” He knows he should be, anyway, which is close enough. “Tell me about him.”

And with that, Dean turns into a complete stranger before his eyes, all soft smiles and red ears. He starts to describe this weird-ass gay man who’s somehow not run screaming from the fucked-up mess that is a Winchester life. He’s a doctor with a local family practice, grouchy, loyal, full of conviction, and protective of Dean’s health. He has a strange little sense of humor that’s hard to recognize, and is prone to picking fights in defense of the weak. He’s a few years older than Dean, but not nearly so well-versed in what is ‘cool.’ He jogs regularly on the trails around here, which does fantastic things for his calves and ass, something that makes Dean leer and look a bit more like he used to, but which Sam didn’t really need to know.

Dean’s so damn happy, and it only makes Sam feel worse.

He’s been married almost the same amount of time Sam has, and yet everything in his life seems to be going perfectly. How the hell did domestic bliss just fall into  _ Dean’s _ lap, of all people?

As young adults, Dean used to repeatedly tell him there was no point in pursuing a slow romance because it wasn’t going to last anyway. He’d insisted on teaching Sam how to pick out the easy lays, steered him away from forming deep friendships, and burned bridges with others at the drop of a hat.

When Dad called and demanded lamb’s blood in the middle of the school day, Dean had pulled Sam out of midterms for a ‘family emergency’ that had never gotten excused.

While Sam worked his ass off to get back into debate club after being jerked from one school to another, Dean dropped out of high school and focused on his skills in petty crime.

While Sam desperately styled his hair and clothing as normally as he could in the mirrors at secondhand stores, lonely as hell and hoping against all odds that someone at school would invite him to hang out, Dean would swagger around in Dad’s too-big leather jacket, openly wearing satanic-looking charms and insulting anybody who drove a mini-van. Dean  _ never  _ cared about the apple pie life. Dean never even  _ tried. _

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that after Sam’s years and years of effort, Dean’s the one who gets life handed to him on a silver platter just by lucky accident.

Beside him, Dean sits looking out over the sunny yard, happy and oblivious to his own unearned good fortune.

“But what about you, man? I mean, I know, the divorce. But what else do you have going on? What have I missed? Last I checked, you’d graduated from Stanford.”

Insides tight but knowing he has no call to get angry, Sam tries on the modest smile he uses when talking to witnesses and Jess’ relatives. “Oh, well, I got my J.D., started work in a large firm doing civil litigation. Got promoted quickly. I’m a senior litigator now. Eligible for partnership starting next year. Bought a nice suburban two-story in Sierra Madre.” Dean’s earlier comment catches up to him and he frowns. “Wait a minute, you knew about my graduation? I changed my name.”

“Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d done.” Dean’s gaze drops and he huffs a quiet laugh. “Checked the online graduation program every year just in case, but no Winchesters. It was only luck that I saw your picture in one of the group photographs. Still couldn’t get a name to match though.”

“You could’ve come. If I’d seen you…” Maybe. Sam had still been pretty defensive of his independence at that point. But he likes to imagine he would’ve been magnanimous on such a milestone, despite deciding not to send any invites.

Dean’s smile fades. “I tried calling. You’d changed your number, changed your name. Thought that was a pretty clear sign.” He fidgets with his beer label for a while, avoiding eye contact. “I tried hard to find you when I got married, though. Went all through the public records, all through the university site, cold-called every law firm in Palo Alto, San Jose, San Francisco…”

“I work in L.A. now.”

“Yeah. Shoulda thought to check there.”

They sit in awkward silence for a minute. Sam almost feels guilty, which is ridiculous—it isn’t as if he forced Dean to spend all that time looking for him. And if Dean had wanted to stay in contact, maybe he should’ve stood up for Sam against John’s insane, obsessive edicts and Sam might’ve actually phoned him once in a while. Which reminds him.

“I tried calling you, too, but got some guy named Josh. So it looks like I’m not the only one who dropped off the map.” Sam pastes on a smile to cover the hardness he’s feeling underneath. The fact that he only tried this number less than 24 hours ago is irrelevant. Who knows how long it’s been changed.

Dean’s response is surprisingly sober. “Yeah. Had to change my phone a few years ago. Someone was trying to kill me, kept tracking me with it, so...”

“Like, a tech-savvy monster?”

“No, I—someone else. I don’t really hunt anymore, not since Cas.”

Sam blinks in surprise. The idea of Dean not hunting is almost unbelievable. Hell, if he’d known convincing him to quit was even possible, he would’ve been open to rekindling the relationship much earlier. But there’s nothing to be done about that now. It’s water under the bridge. He sits in silence for a moment, unexpectedly thinking over all the time they’ve missed.

The could-have-beens extend the silence between them. It’s too bad that they’ve lost the camaraderie they once shared, even interspersed as it was with anger, fights, and periods of true resentment. He lifts his beer in toast and, in an up-swell of nostalgia, makes an effort to recapture the banter of their youth.

“Well, I’ll toast to that. To you not hunting, to the marriage, and to the job. You were so incompetent at actual human relationships, I can’t say I ever saw it coming, but I guess we both grew up.” Sam laughs teasingly and takes a long drink, gratified to see Dean follow with his own drink a moment later. Dean gives him a thin smile of acknowledgement but doesn’t return the jibe, and they fall into another prolonged silence.

Drinking again just to have something to do with himself, Sam gropes awkwardly for a way out of this conversational dead end. He forces another huff of laughter out into the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon yard.

“Well, anyway, here you are, Dean Winchester, respectable small-town husband and—what’s the job, again?”

“Mechanic. I own the place with Bobby. But, uh, it’s not Winchester.”

Sam latches onto the factoid. “No? You changed it, too?”

“No, I, uh, I took Cas’ name. It’s Novak now.”

“Oh. Mine’s Warner. Seemed easiest to stick with the same initials.”

“Oh.”

They stare out into the yard longer.

Dean’s next question comes tentatively, out of character in his gentleness. “Did she, uh, did your wife—”

“Jess. No, she kept her name.”

“No kids…?”

A real laugh escapes Sam’s throat to his surprise. It hadn’t even occurred to him, but that would’ve been the only thing that could have made this clusterfuck worse. “No, no. Fortunately. We, uh, we didn’t have the time. I’m still building my career, and. Well. Y’know.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Jess had wanted them, at first, until he’d explained to her how he never wanted to be like his father, having kids just to dump them off alone or on somebody else while he was busy with work. She didn’t know the half of it, still blissfully unaware even now that John Winchester wasn’t actually a traveling salesman with a drinking problem, but rather a traveling revenge-obsessed occult-wielding monster hunter with a drinking problem.

Sam shakes it off, forces a smile back on his face and pops open another beer. “So. Should we stay in tonight, or go out?”

Dean scratches his ear, plainly uncomfortable. “Oh, I can’t tonight. Cas and me are… well, we’ve got plans.”

“I can tag along.”

“They’re, um, dinner plans. At a charitable donor’s house in Granby. It’s a sort of an invitee-only thing for the med people.” He laughs in embarrassment, half-turned away. “I swear, I didn’t think when I married a doctor I’d be getting into all this dinner party and white tablecloths kind of thing, but here we are. Gotta wear a suit and everything.”

Dean turns back to him, eyes glittering with happiness. They search Sam’s own, before dimming to something more like sympathy. Or maybe pity. Sam hates it.

“But, uh, y’know what, they’ll forgive me if I bail this once. Cas can handle the charity update on his own. I mean, it’s not every day my long-lost little brother finds his way back to the family, eh? You need me right now.”

“I don’t need you,” Sam says a little too sharply.

Dean doesn’t look convinced. “You came all the way out here, man. Pretty sure it wasn’t for the mountain air.”

“No, I mean, okay, yeah, I want to hang out, which is why I called Bobby,” he emphasizes as a reminder that Dean wasn’t the center of this visit to begin with. “But I’m 30 years old, and I’ve been handling my own shit nearly half my life. I can’t just show up out of nowhere after eleven years of silence, no warning, and just expect you to drop everything in your life at a moment’s notice. I can wait ‘til tomorrow.”

“You sure?” Dean starts to get up.  _ No,  _ Sam mutters inside his head, but gives a firm nod anyway.

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

Dean still hesitates. Abruptly, Sam feels annoyed.

“I’ve got Bobby, Dean. I’ve got another case of beer in the kitchen to drown my sorrows in, and a spare room to crash in. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” Dean purses his lips and claps Sam on the back, then after yet another one of those pauses that shouldn’t be there, leans in to give him a quick rough hug and then leaves.

Sam listens to the Impala start up and then rumble away. He waits, feeling inexplicably betrayed. Despite what he’d said, on some level he hadn’t really believed Dean would leave him.


	2. The Bar

Bobby’s spare room is rough but comfortable enough. Disappointingly, Sam’s hopes of company to bolster him in his hour of need are dashed early on, as Bobby’s up and out on tow calls from 6am to 10am, from 11am to 1:00pm, and then again from 5:00pm to 7:30pm. Even when he’s around the house, he divides his time between insurance invoicing and paperwork for the co-owned repair shop.

Dean is likewise unavailable, scheduled to work 7:00am to 3:00pm at the garage, so Sam’s left to his own devices, puttering around Bobby’s yard and staring at the chipmunks. He gets antsy after a while and drives the ten minutes to the General Store to browse the limited options, ends up buying a pack of gum and then driving back to Bobby’s again.

Finally he gets a text, having shared his new number with the two of them last night. Dean’s offering to pick him up after work for an evening at the Sagebrush BBQ and Grill, where Sam can get to know Cas and some of their friends. A quick check-in with Bobby confirms that he’s still out on another call to pick up a stalled motorist up in the Rockies, so riding in with Dean sounds like the sensible choice. The infamous Cas will be meeting them at the bar since his clinic is only a short walk down the street.

He waits out on the front step by the geranium bed with one of Bobby’s lore books as his only entertainment until about a quarter past five, at which point the Impala rumbles down the drive and Dean whistles at him to get in.

Not only is there a St. Christopher pendant hanging from the rearview mirror, despite Dean having always sworn those things were superstitious crap; there is an honest-to-god iPod jack installed in the dash.

Sam feels like he’s just stepped into an alternate universe.

Dean follows his pensive stare until he realizes what Sam’s looking at, then relaxes and laughs. “What? Oh,  _ those.  _ Those belong to Cas.”

“You let him mar your baby?” Sam asks as he gets in.

“Aw, she doesn’t mind.” Dean pats the dashboard. “She likes him.”

For such a small change, it’s surprisingly unsettling. The Impala has been profaned by modern technology and hokey religion, and Dean doesn’t even seem to care. It’s not even the same songs in the cassette deck anymore; Sam belatedly recognizes the first verse of  _ Shake It Off  _ from the old speakers as he folds himself into the passenger seat.

Dean himself still seems out of reach—calm, relaxed, and friendly enough, but reserved in a way that Sam never used to see him.

“So, uh, Taylor Swift, huh?” Sam tries again, prodding with a small grin, but Dean just nods nonchalantly like he doesn’t even notice.

“Yeah, I kinda like it.”

They fall back into silence as they drive. It’s like being in the car with a stranger wearing his brother’s face. Finally they reach the bar and grill.

The place is a paragon of Western décor. Peanut shells crunch under his feet on the otherwise clean hardwood floor. Rifles, spurs, steer skulls, and shamelessly tacky license plates decorate the walls. A couple of TVs playing sports games hang behind the bar, and a sign by the door advertises happy-hour food and drinks. At least this place is vaguely in keeping with what he remembers of his brother growing up.

A couple of women wave from a booth as they pass. “Hey, Dean.”

“Hey, Krissy. Billie.”

Two more voices pipe up from people at another booth before they even reach the bar.

“Hey, man.”

“Hey.”

“Hey, Patience. Max, Alicia.”

The dark-haired woman working behind the bar looks up from where she’s talking to a group of three men, the nearest one short and slight, the next burly and bearded. The bartender leans back, low-cut tank top reveal lean muscle. “Dean! About time you got here. Cas won’t stop telling everyone about tick disease.”

“Lyme disease,” says the third man, and he stands up from the barstool to return Dean’s casual kiss on the lips, their arms going unconsciously around each other’s waists as they sit at the bar.

“Cas, this is Sam. Sam, Cas. That’s Benny and Garth.” Dean points out latter two with thumb.

Whatever Sam had expected, this isn’t it. Sam’s first impression of Cas is that he’s way too put-together for Dean. Still dressed professionally in the kind of suit and tie you’d expect from a Sunday school teacher, Cas epitomizes the look of a stable, responsible, emotionally mature adult human being. He’s calm, confident, and also way more masculine than Sam had pictured—nearly as tall as his brother at six feet, broad-shouldered and fit, a jaw like cut glass, dark stubble, and blue eyes that stand out with an intense inner peace as they shake hands.

“Wow, you really are a guy.”

Cas’ smile falters, and Dean looks at Sam with a small frown.

“Yeah, no shit. I told you that, dude.” He turns to the bartender. “Hey Pamela, could we get a couple of El Sols, please?”

“Bourbon, actually, thanks,” Sam intervenes. “And I think I didn’t fully believe it wasn’t a prank until now. Hi, by the way,” he says to Cas.

“It’s nice to meet you,” says Cas politely. “Dean tells me you’re a lawyer in California.”

“Senior litigator at a firm in L.A. I’m applying for partnership next year.”

“That sounds very prestigious.”

“It’s not bad. I do well enough.”

Dean smiles, beer glass at his lips, and pauses to add, “Never doubted you would, Sammy. Always said you were the smartest in the family.”

Cas sends an unreadable glance Dean’s way before turning back to Sam.

“We’re glad to have you out here. Have you been to been to the National Park yet?”

Sam nods. “Drove through it to get here. Took I-25 to Highway 34.”

Cas’ brow furrows in confusion. “From California?”

Dean and Sam answer in unison, “Wyoming.”

“He didn’t know Bobby had moved,” Dean adds, in what is probably meant to be a rebuke. Sam shifts in annoyance, certain that Dean’s trying for some kind of passive-aggressive retaliation that Sam can’t directly call him on. His bourbon arrives and he downs it, holds up a finger for another and then points to the bottle. Pamela brings him the bottle so he can pour his own shots.

“If your pass is still valid, we should take a day trip this weekend. Do some hiking.”

“Lotta good hiking around here,” Benny chimes in, and he and Garth join the couple in describing the local area—the population booms depending on the season, the tourists who show up for boat rentals or snowmobiling. Tim Allen lives around here somewhere, some kind of a local claim to fame, and so did that bulldozer rampage guy back in ‘04. The national forest is all around, but it’s better to go with a group rather than going solo. Enthusiasm regained, Dean launches into a story about the time Cas went hiking on his own and ended up trapped in the car without his keys by a black bear, and the group all has a good laugh.

Sam keeps drinking all throughout the sales pitch, thinking about how pastoral and ideal it all sounds. He’s still not sure how his plan to have some one-on-one time getting reacquainted with his brother turned into a group gathering in public with all Dean’s friends.

Pamela brings everyone pulled pork and fries. Sam broods as he picks at it, appetite dull, smiling occasionally and interjecting at first but less as they go on. They’re directing the conversation for his benefit, but they all have such a dynamic already. It’s a small town, and judging by their entrance into the bar and grill, Dean is known and liked by literally everyone who lives here. They interact like a perfect team, totally relaxed, with no competition between them and nowhere urgent to be. None of them jockey to one-up each other. None of them undercut each other’s image to look better by comparison. They’re all equally into hiking or building porches or grilling or whatever, and they keep anticipating each other’s lines and requests. He feels like an outsider.

Sam ruminates and drinks silently for a long time while the conversation continues around him, finishing nearly a third of his bottle by the time everyone else is done playing with their food. Cas is now explaining the entire endocrine system in response to someone’s question about whether beer counts as a carb. He’s so goddamn smart, well-educated, in great shape; Sam remembers Dean talking about how much he jogs for exercise. As he talks to their adoring friends, he keeps an affectionate arm wrapped around Dean’s waist, leans their shoulders together, casually touching his chin and sharing private smiles. It’s too goddamn perfect, and Sam feels that nausea from the day before make a reappearance. Unable to take anymore of the lovey-dovey peacocking, Sam interrupts to get Cas’ attention.

“So, you’re a doctor?”

“I am a doctor. I also run—” Cas makes eye contact with Dean, who shakes his head, eyes wide. “—several patient support groups,” he finishes smoothly.

“What’s that like?” Sam sways forward over the bar and refills his shot glass. He downs it in one go. It’s his sixth in just over an hour, but he’s had a heavy meal with it. It’s not enough.

“What’s doctoring like?” Cas rephrases agreeably. “Well, there’s more paperwork than you’d think.”

“Do you work at a hospital or a clinic?”

“I co-own a small family practice here and in Granby.”

“And which office do you prefer?”

“Grand Lake.” Cas is smiling at Dean again. “It’s close to home. I spend most of my time here.”

“Right. Right. But working in the Grand Lake office, it can’t be that busy, can it? Isn’t a population of five hundred a little small to support a satellite clinic?”

Dean intervenes with a gruff expletive. “Jesus, Sam. Is this a conversation or an interrogation?”

“Cross examination.” Sam smiles, perhaps not as nicely as Cas had. The bourbon is finally warming him, relaxing the tension that’s been building in his gut this whole dinner.

Cas’ reply is measured. “A significant portion of our patients in Grand Lake are elderly retirees. It’s to their advantage to decrease travel time when possible.”

“That’s kind of you. No, really. I can’t imagine it’s an easy expense to burden, funding a second location on a small-town practice budget. Even Granby—how big can it be? A few thousand people?” Sam leans heavily on the bar, one leg slipping off the stool’s crossbar.

“We do alright,” Cas says, a little thin-lipped. “Dean’s garage income helps.”

“Yeah, his garage income.” Sam nods, and then nods again and keeps nodding, shot glass pressed against his chin. “Garage income. The mechanic and the doctor.” He laughs. “I still can’t get over the fact that you’re a guy. It’s hilarious.”

Cas’ ever-present equanimity finally fades into a dangerous frown. “Why is that?” he asks stiffly.

“It’s just so, y’know, so out of character. For Dean. Like a, a polar opposite of the Dean I know. Very un-Dean.”

If Cas had feathers, they’d be ruffled. “Given that you last knew him when you were in high school, I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“Right, but this is like, this is like the fundamentals of Dean, here. I’m not talking about learning to appreciate a vegetable once in a while. I’m talking about fundamentals. Dean only cared about three things: chicks, cars, and rock’n’roll. And eating, like, burgers and pie. Junk food. And old movies. And like, like imitating Dad to the point of obseech-ob-obsequiousness. He was the poster-child for nonstop overcompensating masculinity. And now it’s like, just—” He leans back against the bar and waves a hand demonstrably up and down his solemnly frowning brother.

“Like, Taylor Swift and gay housekeeping. What’dja do, try to overcorrect and swing too far in the other direction?” Sam snickers at his own joke.

It doesn’t go over well with anyone else. The conversation among the whole group dies and everyone is looking at him, so he backpedals uncomfortably, widening his eyes at Cas to show his sincerity.

“But I want you to know, man, I fully accept you. I mean, you have your shit together, you know? You’re like, stable and stuff, and god knows Dean needs that. Dean wouldn’t know stable if it bit him in the ass.”

Dean and Cas exchanged troubled glances. Sam mentally pats himself on the back for being supportive of his brother’s venture into the enlightened world of progressive values and pours another drink. He’s only partway through the bottle. The night’s still young.

Dean and Cas talk to each other quietly for a while, low enough that Sam can’t hear them and other conversations break out among small groups at the bar.

Over on his right, Pamela and Benny seem to be planning a no-strings-attached hook-up after closing. Sam leans back as he drains his shot glass, eyeing Pamela from under his lids. She’s telling Benny about some kind of palm-reading she can do, but not using his palms _ , if he knows what she means _ . Benny’s smiling back at her and asking encouraging questions. She’s hot, too, and Benny’s barely even trying. Pamela leans forward toward him, exposing her tramp stamp to half the bar. She’s exactly the kind of girl Dean would’ve been all over in their youth. Not Sam’s type, no—but Dean always zeroed straight in on the Pamela’s of these bars. Except Dean isn’t into women anymore, apparently. Which is just weird.

“You’re hitting the bottle a little hard there, buddy,” Dean’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Might want to switch to water for a while.”

He turns to see Dean watching him watch Pamela, a concerned expression on his face. It’s not that far off from the supercilious look Jess always gave him whenever she said she was ‘worried’ about him. Sam closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at it.

“Nahhh, this is barely enough to give me a buzz. But seriously,” he waves a hand in the direction of Pamela’s lovely ass. “Are you telling me  _ that  _ doesn’t do it for you anymore? That after, just,  _ years  _ of back alley sleazing, you just, pffft! Lost interest? All about the dick, suddenly?”

Cas is shooting daggers at him for reasons Sam can’t comprehend. Dean looks uncomfortable. “Ok, one—I’m bi, Sam, not gay,” he says quietly. “Two—I’m a happily married man. Of course I’m not scoping out Pamela. And can you turn down the volume?”

Sam scoffs. “Oh.  _ Married.  _ Ha. Yeah, I get that. I  _ get _ that. I’ve  _ done  _ that, if you recall. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, returned the T-shirt because the T-shirt didn’t wanna be my T-shirt anymore.”

The low-simmering hurt and betrayal that’s been following him for the last week abruptly washes over him all over again, and he stares morosely over the bar at the TV playing a football game up there, the Eagles versus the Raiders, while he tries to hold himself together. He can’t remember what city the Eagles are supposed to be from.

“I don’t really get it,” he confesses after he’s swallowed down any trace of shakiness in his voice. He’s half-aware of his brother hovering like some useless but ever-present guard beagle, and it irritates him somehow. “I dressed nice, drove a Prius. I listened to all of her feelings about, y’know, about things. I kept in shape. I have a graduate-level education and a high-paying, respectable job. I went to all of her family things, the holidays and birthday parties. I listened to her dad talk about politics, for chrissakes _._ ”

He looks sideways at Dean, still sitting there like a lump, the man with a million genuine friends and a loving supportive spouse. The _good_ brother, who always does exactly what he’s told and despite all logic to the contrary, still manages to have it all without even trying.

He rotates on his stool to squint at Dean more directly, old resentments boiling slowly back to life inside him.

“Have  _ you  _ ever listened to  _ Cas’ _ dad talk about politics, Dean? Have you even  _ met  _ his family?” Somehow, Sam knows for a fact that he hasn’t. He knows it deep in his gut; he doesn’t even have to ask. Dean wouldn’t have the courage. “What do you even tell them you do? A, a mechanic’s job at a garage? Do they know you barely have a GED? Do they know you fuckin’  _ hunted  _ things?”

Dean pulls back like he’s been struck.

_ Good,  _ Sam thinks savagely.  _ Let him doubt himself for once. Let him see what it’s like to second-guess every single social interaction and wonder if he’s screwed it up. Maybe he’ll get a glance at what it’s like to be me. _

From his forgotten periphery, Cas gets closer, brows drawn together in a masculine sort of firmness, just another sign of goddamn perfection.

“Sam, you’re drunk, and need to stop before you say something you regret.”

He can’t, though. Dean just keeps staring at Sam, wide eyes stupidly vulnerable, just like he used to look at Dad when Dad was being an asshole to them both, and it brings back all the anger of his teen years. Sam was the only one willing to stand up against the constant bullying and insanity. Sam was the only one who would ever fight for either of them. It didn’t matter how defiantly Dean might face the monsters they hunted; he’d always just shut down and  _ take  _ it when John started dishing it out. Sam  _ hates  _ when Dean goes passive. It riles him up and the bitterness comes pouring out before he can even think about it. All he wants to do is make him fight back for once in his life.

“Do they know you’re on the books for grave robbing? Or about the credit card fraud? Do they know that you’re a  _ killer,  _ Dean? Or even, like, the serial love-em-and-leave-em crap that you pulled before Cas here, before he let you move in and play house and normal life and all of that—Does he know your  _ actual  _ sexual preferences? Or are you just, just playing at commitment, pretending to be all happy and trusting and mutually supportive and crap, and pretty soon it’s gonna be back to Pamela or whoever—”

Cas hauls Sam up off the stool by his arm, hissing, “Alright, it’s time for you to hit the road for the night. Dean, I don’t want to leave you here, but I’m going to take the car and drop him back at Bobby’s to sleep this off. I’ll be right back. I need to have a little talk with Sam and I don’t think you need to hear it.”

Dean just stares silently after them, all uselessly defenseless and glossy-eyed as Cas drags Sam out the door. The big one, Benny, puts a hand on his shoulder just as the door swings shut behind them; Dean’s still got people touching him and supporting him even now.

Cas shoves Sam roughly out onto the parking lot.

The passenger door of the impala is already open and Sam loses his balance momentarily as he’s roughly dragged down and shoved inside.

“Hey! Watch it!” Sam glowers at him, righting himself and settling in with his arms crossed, half-slouched in his seat.

Back on the driver’s side, Cas gets in and digs around in his pockets for a moment before swearing softly under his breath. He starts the car, and something about it niggles at that part of Sam that notices when something’s important to a case. He’s too angry to work out what it is, and his brain feels foggy anyway.

_ Shake It Off _ comes blaring back on the second the engine’s on, and Cas hits the radio dial with more force than necessary to turn it off. They stew in a mutual angry silence for the first mile and a half.

After several minutes of driving through the quiet darkness, the nostalgic rumble of the Impala’s engine and the road under their feet, Cas breaks first.

“I realize our marriage may come as something of a shock to you, Sam, especially given your own recent ill fortune,” he says with carefully controlled anger. “I won’t pretend to know you, or what you’ve gone through, although if it’s anything like what Dean experienced growing up with your father, I’m not surprised if you still have issues to work through. But if there’s one thing I won’t tolerate, it’s people that Dean trusts telling him that he’s somehow less worthy because of his job, his education, or his orientation.”

Sam seethes into his crossed arms. The jarringly wrong glare of the goddamn iPod sits between them, a blatant reminder that Cas shouldn’t even be driving this thing. The Impala is Dean’s car, or Dad’s in a pinch.

“I didn’t say that,” he bites back tightly.

“No? So you brought up his GED and my family’s hypothetical acceptance of that as a positive, then? How stupid of me to misunderstand.”

“No, I just meant that I don’t—ugh!” Sam slaps his thighs and tosses his head back in frustration, facing out the window. “I can’t talk about this with you.”

“I think you’d better. I certainly won’t permit you to talk about it to Dean.”

“It’s none of your business what I talk about with Dean!”

“It’s very much my business when someone turns up after eleven years of cold shouldering my husband only to insult him and re-awaken the worst of his insecurities.”

“I wasn’t insulting him!”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

“I just—Do you even know what he did, before he was a mechanic? Do you know what our dad does?”

“He was a hunter. That’s how I met him.”

Sam lets out a sigh. “Oh, okay, then you do know that shit is real. That’s gotta be—that must be it, after all. That’s why I’m sitting in the doghouse with Jess, and Dean’s playing healthy modern family with a white picket fence and a doctor, for chrissake.”

“Are you comparing your relationship with ours?” Cas asks, tone colored with disgust and disbelief. Sam’s starting to know how he feels.

“Look, I know he can be heroic, okay?” he concedes, abruptly tired and sympathetic to this poor sap sitting next to him who doesn’t even know what he’s getting into. The Winchester family really is messed up. “Dean’s a hero. He’s self-sacrificing. He’s brave. He’s a good guy. I’m not discounting any of that. I’m just saying, he doesn’t have his shit together, and never did. I  _ know _ him. You can’t spend 24 hours a day locked in a car or a motel room with somebody, sharing the same bathroom and living out of each other’s duffel bags without knowing more about them than any healthy person should ever want to know.”

He softens his voice, regretful but determined to break it to him gently. “Dean doesn’t do commitment. He’s got a fear of feelings and an introspection blind spot a mile wide. I can see why you like him if he saved your life or something, but let’s not pretend he’s got the actual social skills necessary to hold out for the long haul.”

Cas hits the brakes far too hard, and Sam is thrown forward against his seat belt, belatedly grateful he’s gotten used to buckling without thinking.

He turns to his left in indignation, only to be met with the full force of Cas’ righteous fury boring holes right into Sam’s head. Visibly seething, Cas hisses, “Dean is the best man I have ever met in my life, and not only for his courage and self-sacrifice, but for his humor, his instinctual kindness, and his empathy for others, even in the worst of situations.”

Which is loyal as hell, but Sam’s response to that effect is interrupted.

“I don’t know how that last trait managed to skip both of his remaining biological family members, but I can assure you, whatever shallow caricature you seem to have built of your brother in your years of absence, it is clear to me that you don’t ‘know’ him at all.”

Sam pulls back in affront. “Oh, please—”

“You think he doesn’t have his ‘shit’ together. What ‘shit’ is that, Sam? His full time job at the business he owns and runs?”

“I didn’t—”

“Perhaps his volunteering in the community, the respect and the reputation he’s earned among his neighbors and peers, as someone they can go to if they’re in trouble? As someone they  _ want  _ to go to, when they celebrate the things that are going right? Or maybe it’s financial for you, or marital, in which case, allow me to inform you that Dean and I have a healthy set of retirement accounts, own our own home, and have been happily exclusive for five years, four of which we’ve been married. We trust each other with everything, and unlike what you’ve implied about your own marriage, keep no secrets from each other about our dark hidden pasts—”

“Hey!” Sam surges up in his seat, shock turning to rage at the low blow. “You don’t know the first thing—”

“You don’t  _ know  _ anything about your brother or what he’s been through in the eleven years since you dropped your family like a used wrapper and took off for greener pastures.” Cas’ continuing anger overrides Sam’s own. “And I don’t blame you for that, Sam. Dean doesn’t blame you. It happened. It made sense at the time. But don’t take your regrets out on the one person in your life who gave his best for you.”

“I’m not taking anything out on him! And I don’t have regrets!”

“Good. Now either you figure out how to bite your tongue on your opinions of Dean for the remainder of your preferably  _ short _ stay in town, or I will hasten that exit for you.”

Reaching across Sam’s lap, Cas grabs the door handle and shoves it open without waiting for a response.

“You can get out and walk from here. You need to sober up before reaching Bobby’s, and the night air might do you some good.”

Sam stares at him in enraged disbelief and Cas just holds his gaze, chin lifted and staring right back, until he finally climbs out and slams the car door. The Impala pulls away with a spray of dirt and gravel, leaving Sam fuming alone by the side of the road.


	3. The Next Morning

So now he knows Dean’s new husband is a possessive dick who likes to issue ‘shut up or get out’ ultimatums. There’s something vaguely comforting in that, since at least it means Dean’s life isn’t quite as preternaturally perfect as Sam had been starting to think it might be. Of course, Dean probably likes his husband’s control issues. It fits into the penchant for martyrdom and obsessive codependency that Dean’s always been so prone to—a reassuringly familiar aspect of the brother he used to know, even if an unhealthy one.

Of course the downside is that Cas, feeling threatened by Sam, may now be planning to poison Dean against him, so Sam needs to get a jump on damage control right away.

He picks up a six-pack of El Sol and goes round to the garage after getting the address from Bobby. The way to Dean’s heart has always been through lengthy, focused familial attention, and Sam will just have to make sure he gets exactly that.

The repair shop is small, consisting of a small parking lot with four empty spaces, a two-door garage big enough for two cars, and a glass door with an ‘open’ sign on it leading into a tiny lobby with a small chest-high counter. A single ancient desktop computer sits next to a pile of binders and papers, a landline phone, and a grimy gray credit card swiper on the cheap linoleum. Dean’s in the nearest garage in a thick set of coveralls with his name on them. A few space heaters are scattered around, a visual reminder of the usual chill at this elevation, but none of them are running on a balmy day like this.

“Heyyy, surprise!” Sam says, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. “Look what I brought you for your lunch break.”

Dean looks up from under hood, startled, and breaks into a quiet laugh. “Oh, hey! Dude, it’s like 11:00AM. Thanks though, maybe in a bit. You can have a seat over there. I’m trying to get this transmission running.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got nothing else to do today, so I thought I’d hang around. Get to know where you work, catch up on what I’ve missed, all that good stuff.” He’s maybe laying it on a little thick, but he fucked up last night and there’s no point pretending he didn’t. Cas sort of made it sound like they were going to have a tug-of-war over Dean, and if that’s how they’re playing it, Sam has ground to regain.

“Ok, well, this is the garage,” Dean grunts as he twists something in the engine, then sets it aside. “I do most of the cars myself, but Garth’s here part-time when he’s in town, and Bobby helps out if we get busy. Charlie handles the office and accounting stuff. You’ll meet her if you stick around.”

“Charlie, huh? She one of those girls at the bar last night?” Sam’s memory isn’t super clear, but he knows Dean greeted a lot of women on the way in.

“Nah, she’s a friend I met through Cas. Turned out we have a lot of common interests, so now we hang out more than they do.”

Popping open one of the cans, Sam scoffs without thinking. “Common interests like what? Cars and porn?” He hears himself and quickly corrects, “I mean, Cas seems to think I don’t know jack about you, so I’m honestly asking. What are you into these days?”

“Oh, well…” Dean looks embarrassed, which actually is kind of intriguing. Sam hasn’t seen that expression since the good old days of pushing each other’s buttons as teens. Nostalgia brings more genuineness to his grin as he waits for an answer.

“Y’know, movies and stuff. The usual. Maybe a few games.”

“Games?”

“Like table-top. Or, or LARPing, sometimes. It’s kind of dumb, but it’s fun to just cut loose sometimes. Run around the woods whackin’ strangers with nerf swords.” Ears red, Dean ducks his head under the hood again and tries to look nonchalant about it. “Beats hunting kitsune with the real thing, I can tell you that.”

“Nerf swords. You’re kidding.” Sam chuckles as he takes another drink.

“Nah. It’s, it’s not as—okay, it probably is as geeky as you’re imagining, but I’m the Queen’s own handmaiden! I won’t be ashamed!” Dean insists in mock-defiance, and Sam laughs along with him.

“I gotta see pictures of this. Handmaiden!”

“I’ve got badass hero armor, dude. Don’t knock it. I’d show you on my phone, but my hands are a little greasy right now.”

“Where is your phone? I can find it.”

Dean’s smile turns into more of a smirk. “You wanna flip through all my nudes first, be my gue—”

“Nope, never mind. Later is good.”

“—Just saying,” Dean continues, waggling his eyebrows, “Cas isn’t averse to a good dick pic. Taking or receiving.”

“More than I wanna know, dude.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” He returns his attention to the engine in triumph.

“How did you meet him, anyway? Cas said it was through hunting.” Any expectation that Dean would relish the chance to tell that story is quickly dashed. The way he instantly deflates says it wasn’t a happy experience.

“I, uhh. I was going through a tough time. Hunt went bad, and Dad was three states away, not returning calls. Bobby was in the hospital with his own stuff going on. Cas just kinda swept in.”

“You went hunting alone?”

Dean gets a funny look on his face, laughs and shakes his head. “Well, yeah, Sam. What did you think I was doing?”

“I thought, well, I guess I thought Dad and you were. Y’know. Hunting partners.”

Dean frowns. “No. He took off not two days after you did. Like always. I was never his partner. I was always left behind with you, remember?”

“But you used to go with him. Sometimes.”

“Yeah, for training. Same as you.”

Sam opens and closes his mouth, realizing he hadn’t thought about it at all.

“Did you really think he took me along?”

“I guess I assumed.”

“Huh.” Dean works on the car for a while as he thinks about that, an uncomfortable silence settling between them. Eventually, he takes a breath and speaks again, continuing to wrench something under the hood without looking up. “Well, anyway. I hunted solo for about five years, got myself into a real fix. Then I met Cas. He doctored me back to health, so to speak, and I just never left after that.”

Sam lets his gaze drift absently through the shop floor, belated dismay creeping up on him. He can’t believe Dean was hunting solo this whole time. That was okay for a ghost here and there, but _for_ _five years?_ And Sam wouldn’t have ever known if Dean had gotten seriously trapped or killed. Which, okay, not like it makes a difference now, given that Dean’s fine, it’s just sort of chilling to think about. Dean could have died alone in some basement somewhere, with no one coming to look for him.

Sam drinks again, quiet for a long time as he drains his can.

“Did you stay in touch with Dad? After that, I mean?”

Dean pauses, circumspect. “…From time to time.”

“What did he think of you bunking down in Colorado? With Cas? Assuming you told him.”

“Yeah, I told him. He, uh, wasn’t too happy.”

Sam could bet he wasn’t. The shit John used to say about ‘real men’ was tall order enough for a heterosexual jock. No guessing what he would’ve come out with in response to the favored son going gay on him. 

A tenor voice interrupts before he can scrape together a response.

“Uh, hello?”

A thin guy in a polo shirt hovers around the open front of the garage. Dean perks up.

“Hey, howdy! You here about the Nissan?” With a genuine smile, Dean closes the transmission fluid container and guides the customer with open arms into the climate-controlled lobby. Sam waits and watches through the lobby’s full-panel windows as they talk inside. Dean looks happy and relaxed, confident in his posture as he runs his mouth on and on.

Five minutes pass, then ten minutes, with no sign that Dean’s finishing up or coming back. Sam’s thoughts drift back to Jess, as they have for days. Dad wouldn’t have approved of their relationship either, he thinks, but for entirely different reasons. It would’ve been asking for trouble, putting his head in the sand, abandoning their mother, or something along those lines. He probably would’ve told Sam he had the eventual heartbreak coming. Mixing with civilians was a big no-no.

Increasingly gloomy without anything to occupy himself, Sam disconnects another one of the beers in the six-pack and pops the tab open on his second drink. Maybe Dad would have been right. Sam never had the kind of relationship with Jess that would’ve allowed him to tell her the truth about their childhood. He never even wished he  _ could’ve  _ been open with her. He still doesn’t. When he fell for Jess, it was because she was everything different from what he was used to—soft, encouraging, optimistic, with deep local roots and an extended family that was  _ around _ , but not  _ constantly  _ around. She was the physical embodiment of all the picture-perfect family holidays Sam used to see in TV commercials growing up, wrapped in a package of long blonde hair and the nicest legs he’d ever seen. He didn’t want her to know about his past. He didn’t want it to taint the normalcy that he got through her. Which, in retrospect, was possibly too much to pin on a relationship built on a foundation of lies. Maybe the whole marriage was doomed from the start.

Dean comes back into the garage and strides straight over to a paper-strewn desk, leafing quickly through a pile of invoices.

Sam rolls the half-empty can between his palms, melancholy in his introspection. “How’d you know that you really loved Cas, as opposed to the idea of Cas?”

Dean laughs distractedly in surprise. “Uh, that’s a hell of a question. Hold that thought.”

He finds a paper in the stack and takes it back out to the customer out front. They talk again, their conversation stretching on even longer than the first time.

Dean hands the papers over and leans lazily against the counter, nodding along to whatever slow-paced story the customer seems to be meandering through. Sam is reminded irritably of how slowly everyone moves and talks out here. It’s like they don’t ever have to worry about anything falling apart before their eyes, like they think no one’s going to move in and take opportunities away from them if they don’t hustle and get in to grab them first. It’s a damn naïve way of life only possible out here in these isolated hick towns. He drinks more and glowers at the windows.

Dean comes back in. “Sorry about that. It’s a busy time of day.”

Sam just smiles thinly and toasts him with a third beer before opening it.

Back under the hood, Dean sets to humming some Van Halen song under his breath, bent over and covered in engine grease, shoulders loose and happy as a clam. Sam watches and traces his can lid with a finger, a tight quirk to his lips from the smile he can’t quite maintain. It still doesn’t seem fair.

“When I first met Jess,” he says slowly after a minute or so, “and she wanted to date me—not just mess around once or twice in the backseat of a car somewhere but actually long-term date me—I just thought, so this is what normal is.  _ This  _ is what everyone’s always talking about, and I’ve never been able to experience. And I was terrified. I had never done normal before and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.”

Dean huffs a laugh as he wipes something with a rag.

“I think ‘normal’ is overrated.”

“It isn’t, though.” Sam leans forward in his folding chair; it feels important to make this point. “It wasn’t overrated. Normal was fantastic. She used to make cookies once a month to reward herself for going to yoga. Y’know what a crisis was to Jess? A goddamn spat with her friends. We own a two-story house in a suburb outside L.A. The commute’s terrible, but it’s a great investment property.”

“Sounds like a good life,” Dean says lightly, gaze still attentive to the work he’s doing on the car.

“It’s a great life. It is a great life. I don’t even—I don’t even understand where I fucked up. I mean she told me, but I don’t understand it.”

She’d told him they weren’t good for each other at first, and then as time went on and he’d pressed, she’d admitted it was him. He was always performing, and none of their conversations were real. She said he was emotionally unavailable, always at work or drinking at the bar with work people, and then he’d come home and there’d be nothing but more small talk. They had no  _ life,  _ no outings, just work and then this empty space between them in the evenings. Sam never even knew what it was she wanted to fucking talk about.

Sam just wasn’t normal enough in the long run, even with his best efforts. Maybe it would’ve been different if he’d told her about the monsters, maybe they would’ve eked out the end for another year or do as she gave him extra leeway, extra chances to figure out how it’s done, but he thinks the end result would’ve been the same. It’s just not possible to un-fuck your mind once it’s been through the shit they grew up with. He couldn’t react to things the way he was supposed to react, or feel about things the way he was supposed to feel. After all, hearing that your wife had been rained on while changing a flat tire on the way to work doesn’t register much when you’ve been shot at by police while fleeing after digging up a three-month-old infant’s corpse to burn. Of course every conversation with him felt fake. That’s because they were.

He and Dean were child soldiers raised in the midst of an unseen war, and all the sympathy in the world will never be enough to really relate to that, not for normal people who haven’t been where they’ve been.

“Maybe we’re both just doomed by our childhood to never really be able to function in the real world,” he speculates morosely.

Dean looks up at him from the engine with an insulted expression, which softens pityingly as he takes in Sam’s misery. “Dude, I know it’s hard to believe this right now, but this is one single part of your life, at one single point in time. You’re gonna be fine.”

He goes back to work, and Sam drinks in silence for a while longer. It’s not the answer he was looking for, but it’ll do. And at least Dean’s still got his back, even if he sucks at platitudes. Sam was right to come here. Family is both the cause of and the solution to all of his problems. Talking to Dean is like a drink of the hair of the dog that bit him, so to speak. Only those who have lived through an experience can truly understand.

The phone rings and Dean wipes his hands quickly as he’s heading over to it.

Sam glares at it irritably.

“You could let it ring.”

Dean blinks and gives him a strange look like he’s not sure if Sam’s joking or not.

“No, I really can’t. This is my job, remember?”

He picks up and just like that, Sam is left out in the cold again.

“Yep. Yep, we can do that. Uhh, I’d have to see it in person to give you a quote… Yeah. Sure, that’s fine. We’ll be here til 6, so anytime before that—great. Yes. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you.”

“Ah yes,  _ the job _ ,” Sam grumbles as Dean hangs up. “The one thing Dad taught both of us always comes first, no matter what.”

Dean takes a breath and hesitates for a second, then turns to Sam with the sort of seriousness that just screams bad news incoming. Sam tenses on reflex.

“Listen, about Dad. You should know that he’s, uh, not around anymore. He’s not dead, he just—”

Whatever he’s about to say is lost as a voice calls across the small parking lot.

“Dean.”

Cas comes in from the parking lot, suit jacket and tie flapping in the mild breeze. He’s clearly dressed for work himself, out of place among the grease-stained tools and oil rags of the garage. Sam can practically see his hands itching for the pockets in his nonexistent white lab coat.

He looks warily at Sam before ignoring him and focusing solely on his husband. “Dean, it’s the twelfth. I came to pick you up for lunch.”

Dean’s tension melts off him in a single movement and a smile lights up his face. “Oh, great! Maybe we can hit the deli, grab some sandwiches—”

Cas makes significant eye contact, eyes wide and brows raised. “The  _ twelfth _ , Dean. Your medication?”

“Ohhh.” Dean’s eyes dart to Sam. “Shit. Right.”

It’s not a good expression. It’s the classic Dean Winchester  _ I’m-hiding-something-from-Sam-and-feeling-guilty _ expression. It settles into Sam’s gut like a lump of lead. Sam really can’t take anymore betrayals from people he trusted.

“Medication?” asks Sam as neutrally as he can manage.

“Uh, no big. It’s just some, uh, thyroid stuff. But I have to take it at exactly the right time, or my whole body gets out of whack. Sorry, Sammy. Can we take a rain check on the beers?”

Sam’s hands tighten around the beer can with a crunch. This is definitely 100% grade-A bullshit, and Dean is asking him to swallow it. “Why can’t you just take it in the car?”

“Not that kind of—y’know, I get sick and stuff. After taking it. Just for a bit. It’s fine though. How about I make it up to you? Tonight? Garth can take over for the afternoon. We could have those beers at our place, like a backyard barbeque? You can meet Charlie and the gang, and you still haven’t seen our house.”

Again, it’s a trade off of one-on-one time for large-group time. It’s almost like he’s trying to keep Sam at a distance, and it hurts so much worse than one would expect.

But Cas is looking at Dean, obviously not super happy with this, and it occurs to Sam that this is Dean’s best attempt at a compromise. The sudden pre-existing lunch obligation is Castiel’s evil baby, no doubt about it. Cas has sensed Sam’s play for his rightful place in Dean’s affections, and made his move to intercept him. This whole medicine thing stinks to high heaven, and Dean knows it but doesn’t want to betray his spouse. He’s trying to play peacemaker again, just like with Dad—always defending someone else’s shitty actions. Sam’s half an inch from bringing it out into the open to just hash it out right then and there.

But Dean is still looking at Sam with both apology and hope in his eyes. And Dean is Sam’s only genuinely loyal friend. Sam can be mature about this in ways he wasn’t as a teenager.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Sure. Backyard barbeque.”

“Great!” Dean’s relief is evident. “See you at seven! Bring Bobby, he knows the place.”

They leave after turning around the ‘back in an hour’ sign on the front window and closing the bay doors of the garage. Sam is left standing by himself in the lot next to his own lone car, staring after them down the unmarked one-and-a-half lane street.

Castiel is definitely up to no good, and if he thinks he can isolate Dean from his only remaining family, he’s got another think coming. Sam may be willing to postpone a confrontation to spare Dean’s feelings, but he’s not going down in this tug-of-war without a fight.

**~**

It’s 7:15pm, and from the sound of raucous chatter in the backyard as Sam approaches, the evening backyard barbecue is already in full swing.

The house is small, a cabin-style two bedroom one bath, but the yard is huge, trailing gradually downhill until it disappears into a wide line of dark reeds at the edge of the murky lake. A wooden fishing pier juts out onto the deeper water with a couple of cheap folding chairs and a white plastic bucket at the end. Despite the lingering summer sun, there’s a chill in the air, and he’s glad to have brought his North Face jacket.

At the higher end of the unkempt lawn, the grill is going and a rough-hewn wooden picnic table is set out not far from the bug zapper. People mill around happily—Bobby, Dean, Cas, plus Benny and that other guy he was introduced to at the bar and half a dozen additional strangers on top of that.

Sam hates it.

He tries to catch Dean for some one-on-one conversation again, with the same result.

“Be right back, Sammy, I gotta get these buns toasting before the meat goes on. Uhh, here—Jody!” Dean calls to a short-haired woman in jeans and flannel, who turns with a smile and ambles toward them with her hands in her pockets. The blonde woman she was in conversation with follows along.

“Jody, this is Sam, my brother. This is Jody, Donna, and that’s Patience over there by the table, one of their girls. She’s heading out to Berkeley next year, maybe you can give ‘em some pointers or something. I’m comin’!” He yells up at the house.

Sam puts on a mechanical smile and shakes their hands politely, carefully hiding his irritation. He doesn’t know any of these people. He doesn’t even want to. 

“You go to Berkeley?” Donna asks, friendly interest in her eyes.

“No, uh, I went to Stanford. But Berkeley’s great.”

“It’s gonna be hard, being so far away from her, but it’s one of those stages I guess everybody goes through.”

“Least we still have the other girls for another year. It’ll be harder on her end, not knowin’ anybody. I reckon a lot of freshmen get homesick those first few terms,” Jody says.

“Uh, yeah. Somehow, you get through it,” Sam answers distractedly, watching Dean take over the grill from Cas. Immediately, Dean is sucked into a lively conversation with three more people Sam doesn’t know, laughing and waving his cooking tongs around.

“Excuse me, I’m just gonna grab some food.”

Flashing them a quick smile as he detaches himself, Sam heads up the yard to try to snag Dean again now that he’s finally planted in one place, but he’s beaten there by a crowd of yet another set of newcomers, a whole family of six bearing big mixing bowls full of fruit salad and who knows what else.

Sam slows to a halt by the picnic table, watching as Dean, Cas, and the newbies all hug and greet each other. There just doesn’t seem to be any point.

He wanders over to the table without any real aim, eyes passing over multiple bowls of chips and watermelon. Sam’s only addition to the pile was a new six-pack of beer; the previous one hadn’t survived his afternoon of brooding and flipping through lore books in Bobby’s library. He notes it now, set down haphazardly on the grass beside someone’s ice-filled cooler of Cokes. Appetite dead, he turns back to survey the rest of the attendees.

There’s just people everywhere—small-town, slow-moving, slow-talking people, with their idyllic small-town lives and their narrow small-town concerns, boring and oblivious and frustratingly un-ambitious and happy and—and abruptly, he just can’t take it anymore.

He needs to get away from all the people. He slips around the side of the house and goes uphill to the copse of trees in the front yard for some breathing space.

It isn’t more than a minute before he hears the front door slam.

Sam looks up from where he stands in the dappled shade of the poplars to see Castiel walking down the front steps and out toward the parked Impala. He doesn’t seem to notice Sam, which is fine by him—Sam’s had enough of his self-satisfied face and self-righteous posturing anyway.

He watches silently as Cas comes round to the back of the car, drums on the trunk with his fingers and it pops open—which is weird; it wasn’t even locked?—but then Sam sees the inside lid of the trunk as Cas rummages through it and everything comes to a screeching halt.

The wards.

The wards against monsters and magic that have been painted on the inside of the trunk ever since they were kids are  _ entirely _ gone.

~

He waits among the poplars until Cas is halfway back to the front door, close enough to snag his attention with a hissed challenge.

“So, Dean has to go home for his meds every day?”

Cas startles and turns to face him, warily lowering the canvas folding chairs in his hands.

“Hello, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t respond, unwilling to be diverted. He waits, glaring.

Cas starts to look irritated and finally sighs. “Every few weeks. I keep track of it for him.”

“Every few weeks. And yet, that exact moment was when he had to take it. Couldn’t have waited for this evening.”

“Sam.” Cas repositions to face him squarely. “I’m not trying to come between you and your brother.”

It seems they’re going to speak plainly. Sam is happy to oblige.

“No?” he echoes, not bothering to hide his extreme skepticism. “Seemed a little convenient with the timing.”

“No, of course not. I care about Dean’s happiness. He misses you, and wants you in his life. I want him to have what he wants.”

“And yet I can’t help but notice that ‘what he wants’ seems to always be suspiciously in line with ‘what you want.’”

This gets him an exaggerated roll of the eyes, but Sam isn’t fooled. Cas’ shoulders are tense. He’s on the defensive.

“You’ve been here three days. What exactly is it you think you’ve uncovered about me?”

“The fancy dinner party. The iPod jack. The settled home. The mortgage. None of that is Dean’s style. Not even a little bit.”

“People change over time. I’m sure you’re not the boy you were when you left. And marriage does bring its own set of compromises,” Cas adds acerbically, “if you’ll forgive me for bringing it up.”

“Compromises, sure. But not total manipulation. Like his sudden inexplicable lack of precautions in favor of the small-town, apple-pie life. You can’t convince me ‘compromise’ made him outright forget all the dangers that lurk out there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dean’s still careful.”

“Yeah? ‘Cause I had the funniest feeling in the Impala the other day, like something was missing. And what do I see just now?” He gestures sharply at the trunk. “The wards are gone.”

Cas pauses and stares at Sam for a moment, stiff in a way that can only mean he’s onto something. Sam hones in on it like a shark with blood in the water.

Opening his mouth slowly, Cas hesitates. He seems to change his mind before speaking again.

“Well, as you know, he isn’t hunting anymore,” he says carefully. “They were unnecessary.”

“Since when is protection against the supernatural unnecessary?”

Again, there’s a telling pause before Cas answers. He narrows his eyes, then breathes out in a rush. “You’re right, I didn’t like them. I asked him to take them off, and he did. It really wasn’t more complicated than that.”

“Dean loves that car more than anything.”

“I should hope not  _ anything _ ,” Cas attempts to joke, but it falls flat.

“Somehow I don’t see him voluntarily opening it up to witchcraft, wendigoes, and whatever else just because his new beau doesn’t like the aesthetics.”

The flinch is so imperceptible that Sam wouldn’t have seen it if he weren’t looking for it.

“They reminded me of his injuries when we first met. I didn’t like the thought of him risking himself like that again.”

“You don’t like the hunting.”

“I didn’t like the violence.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam eyes his would-be brother-in-law carefully, assessing his next avenue for attack. His first hunch seems to have successfully struck some kind of nerve, so he takes a gamble on another. “But the crime part,  _ that _ you were okay with.”

Cas looks at him sharply, suddenly confused.

“Or did you learn to hotwire a car for purely intellectual purposes?”

Perplexingly, Cas’ shoulders start to relax. “Hotwire…?”

Sam worries for a second that he’s misstepped and lost his advantage.

“Last night. When you were forcing me out of the bar, because you didn’t like my manners. You didn’t have your keys.”

Cas stares at him blankly, then his eyes widen in realization. “Oh. Yes. I… did. Hotwire it. Dean taught me.”

“ _ Dean _ taught—wait, seriously?”

He isn’t sure what kind of bullshit dodge he had expected, but this lie is just too ridiculous to be believed. Sam can’t hold in a startled laugh of disbelief.

“You’re seriously claiming he taught you on  _ his own car _ ? Dean, the guy who wouldn’t even risk a drive-through car wash, taught you how to strip the wires on his own Impala.”

Cas’ chin lifts, his glare carrying the first real glint of real challenge behind it. “Yes, he taught me to hotwire _our car_. After I spent _two_ _terrified hours_ trapped in it by myself at a hiking pull-off with a black bear circling and scratching at the wheels.”

Sam blinks, off-balance for a moment. He does seem to remember a story along these lines being told by Dean and his other buddies last night, which gives it a credibility he wasn’t expecting.

Cas continues on, anger now rising along with newfound confidence. “And a fat lot of good having keys does then, when they’re lying outside where you dropped them in your hurry. Dean stayed on the phone with me the whole time, promising I’d be fine while he ran from house to house on foot, begging someone to give him a ride to come save me. So, yes. I learned how to hotwire a car. Does that meet with your approval, Mr. Civil Litigator? Or do I need to call an additional witness?”

Sam’s put on his back foot a little bit by the sheer vehemence. He doesn’t have an answer. It belatedly occurs to him that he’s not in a courtroom, but standing in a front yard by a lake in the middle of a national forest, surrounded by no one but his sibling, his pseudo-uncle, and a group of their friends. Maybe he really is being a dick.

Cas waits just long enough to know Sam’s got no comeback, and then shakes his head, disgusted. “You know, I’m not an idiot. I’ve been through this dance before. I can tell when someone’s looking for excuses to justify their disapproval of my relationship, though this is the first time I think it’s honestly out of petty jealousy rather than outright bigotry. There’s some consolation in that, at least.”

Sam shifts his weight uncomfortably. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t bother. When Dean first told me his brother was in town, I was cautiously optimistic, even after that awful debacle with John. He praises you constantly, you know that?  _ Sam’s so open-minded _ , and  _ Sam’s got this thirst for knowledge _ .  _ Sam’s always been so smart _ . I should’ve known better than to expect much. Selfish children become selfish adults. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a coleslaw to finish dressing.”

Cas leaves him by the car and storms back inside the house. Sam watches him go, fighting back the niggling sense of guilt. It’s reasonable to be suspicious, he reminds himself sternly. Cas was actively hostile to him in the car that first night. And the sudden interruption for Dean’s ‘medicine’ this morning was weird, too, though maybe not quite as sinister as Sam took it. But after all, it’s only natural to be protective of one’s brother, isn’t it? Dean’s the only family Sam’s got left, besides his Dad, who’s never really counted.

Speaking of whom… Cas’ mention of the ‘debacle with John’ is a hell of a red flag. Sam wonders exactly what went down between them. It must have been bad, whatever it was. Sam can’t even guess whether John’s bigger issues would have been with the gay thing or the quitting hunting thing, which, okay, no, there’s no doubt in his mind it would have been the quitting hunting thing. But his curiosity for the specifics still eats at him.

As he heads back into the back yard, caught up in his own thoughts, Dean approaches with a half-eaten chicken leg and sauce smeared all over his mouth, dimples showing and eyes merry.

“You look like the Jolly Green Giant right after discovering pants are a thing and he’s not wearing them.”

Sam jerks at the interruption, half-distractedly. “Huh?”

“Appalled, Sammy. What’s up?”

And there’s the opening for his curiosity. “Dude, when did Dad meet Cas?”

Dean swallows, the light going out of him a bit as he wipes his face with a napkin.

“’Bout four years ago. It’s, uh, not a happy story.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Dean’s good mood is obviously tanking, but he keeps the smile on for the visitors across the yard.

Sam feels bad for bursting his bubble, but it’s already done now, and he wants to know. He redirects, hoping for more info. “Okay. I mean, it’s good to know the old man’s still kicking, at least. Where is he now?”

“Prison.” Dean’s answer is blunt, delivered through clenched teeth.

Sam laughs in surprised disbelief. “Prison?! And you couldn’t get him out?”

Dean doesn’t answer; he just keeps smiling across the yard, jaw tight.

It slowly dawns on Sam. “You don’t  _ want  _ to get him out.”

The silence and avoidance of eye contact is as good as confirmation.

“Holy crap, Dean. Just how bad was it?”

“Bad enough.”

“Enough to leave him in prison to rot?”

Dean turns on Sam, betrayed. “You really think you’re one to talk here?”

“No! No, of course I’m not saying—you know, that you should forgive him or anything.” Sam huffs another awkward laugh. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You were always such a hardcore defender of everything he did, it’s just, y’know. Weird.”

“Yeah, well, I was wrong.” Dean looks away, not bothering with the smile anymore. The muscle in his jaw clenches and unclenches with emotion. “He was wrong. The stuff he did was wrong, and there’s no defense this time.”

Sam stares at Dean, who seems to be seeing some memory and doesn’t really notice the staring.

Finally, Dean breaks his reverie enough to shake his head. “Y’know, the one thing you’re supposed to do is love your family.”

Sam waits, but Dean doesn’t say anything more than that. He just stares out across the lake for a bit, and then leaves Sam without another word, walking off toward the pier. Cas sees him go from the picnic table where he’s now engaged in conversation with Charlie and Gilda, makes his excuses to them, and follows Dean out there to the edge where they sit together on the planks for a while, feet hanging over the water, bumping shoulders and talking too low and quiet to hear.

Sam watches for a while until he gets that itch on the back of his neck like he’s being watched. He turns and sees Bobby staring him down from six feet away with an all-too-knowing look of disapproval. Sam clears his throat.

“I’m just gonna, uh, bathroom,” he says with a brief awkward smile, and hightails it through into the house.

~

Sam washes his hands in the bathroom, feeling guilty and trying hard not to doubt his own intentions.  _ Petty jealousy,  _ Cas had said. Is that really all it is? No, no, that can’t be it. Alright, maybe it’s true that seeing Dean so obviously surrounded by friends and loved ones has only made his own isolation stand out more, but it isn’t as if he doesn’t have legitimate reasons to be suspicious. Eleven years or not, Sam just can’t figure out how the Dean he knew as a kid could turn into the Dean that lives here today.

Case in point, there’s no way on earth that Dad could have landed himself in prison and Dean wouldn’t at least want to  _ try  _ to get him out. No matter what went down, it’s almost unthinkable that he could turn against Dad. Dean’s loyalty has always been absolute. Castiel’s platitudes about how ‘people change’ and ‘marriage involves compromise’ don’t remotely cover something like this.

And furthermore, what the hell was with that hotwiring-the-Impala story?  _ ‘Our’ _ car, Cas calls it, like Dean would ever let even his closest, most trusted family drive it, let alone take it up into the woods alone for a hiking trip where there are apparently bears and god knows what else. And the erasure of the wards—!

Sam steps back out into the hall, frustration simmering as he tries to pull all these disparate threads together and make sense of them as a whole.

His eyes fall on the living room mantle. Dean’s favorite silver-handled 1911 is in a locked display case.

That’s the feather that breaks the camel’s back. It doesn’t matter how much Dean cares about Cas’ preferences, pacifistic or aesthetic or whatever—if Dean were really in love with someone, there’s no way Dean would give up his ability to protect them. That’s just not how Dean’s love works. He’ll go to hell and back, betray your trust, make you mad as sin in the process, but you’ll be mad and  _ alive _ .

Cas’ distracting rebuke of Sam was just that—a distraction. There’s got to be something else going on. He is clearly up to shady shit and Sam is going to find out exactly what.

A quick check out the kitchen window tells him everyone’s still busy out in the yard, so if he hurries, he probably has enough time to do a quick speed-search of the place.

He’s been through the living room and kitchen on the way to the backyard from the front. The mudroom is open and visible from the kitchen. The hall with the bathroom has three closed doors, presumably bedrooms and a closet, which is where he starts. He finds nothing there but folded blankets and a lockbox with insurance documents and social security cards in it. It mildly interests him to see Dean has a new SSN, but it doesn’t tell him squat about whatever Cas must be holding over him to make him change so drastically.

He tries one of the bedrooms next, and it opens easily—Dean and Cas’ bedroom. He picks through it and finds clothes, books, and an old record player that are clearly Dean’s, plus some more clothes and a framed paintings of birds that are probably Cas’. A quick check under the bed reveals a locker full of lube and sex toys—ew—but nothing unexpectedly suspicious.

A pair of packed duffel bags hide under the hanging suits in the bedroom closet—emergency go-bags, he decides, after a look through them reveals only a few pairs of basic clothes, extra boots, cash, a salt canister, a rosary, and Dean’s old fake IDs.

So at least Dean’s not  _ totally _ naïve now, which he guesses is somewhat reassuring.

He glances out the window again at the barbecue guests to make sure they’re all accounted for before returning his attention to the other side of the closet. He finds only what you’d expect—a shoebox of old invoices, old tote bags from a medical conference, a half-used roll of Christmas wrapping paper. With the time he could reasonably claim to have spent in the bathroom running out, he gives up on the master bedroom and goes for the spare.

That’s where things get interesting.

The room is locked, to begin with. Sam checks out the bathroom window once more to see everybody’s still occupied outside, and then returns to Dean’s closet go-bag to rummage through it for a set of lock-picks. He makes short work of the door and then pockets them to put back if he has time. Once inside, he stops at what he sees.

In the center of the room, there’s what could theoretically be either some very kinky BDSM equipment or possibly hunter paraphernalia—a sturdy medical-grade steel table with chains and straps bolted onto it. The left wall is largely occupied by a large freezer, long enough to hold at least a couple of corpses. Wards cover the walls in layers of flaking dried blood, though not the combinations Sam would expect—there’s nothing to keep out the supernatural, just a lot of generalized protection against ill intent, magical soundproofing, that sort of thing. Several of them Sam doesn’t recognize, so he raises his cell phone and snaps a few pictures to research later.

A bunch of medical crap sits in a bin by the wall—blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, ear thermometer, syringe set with some tubing and clear plastic fluid bags, all empty. Sam snoops beneath them and nothing else comes up. Then he moves to the freezer.

Opening up the lid, he sucks in a breath in shock.

In a way he was expecting something like this, but it’s still rattling to see it after more than a decade of apple-pie suburban life. The inside of the freezer is spattered with blood and half-filled with raw, unpackaged, frost-coated hearts—human by the size of them. The inner lid is painted with unfamiliar blood sigils and magic runes; duct tape holds hex bags to the corners. Candles, chalk, and old brass bowls sit in a plastic tub beneath them.

Castiel is a witch.

It’s so obvious now. Why didn’t he recognize it before? Removing the anti-magic wards from the impala. Giving up hunting. The sudden out-of-character gay thing. There’s no other explanation. Dean must be under Cas’ spell.

The roiling low anger he’s been carrying all day quickly bubbles up into furious rage on his brother’s behalf. Dean has been used by this witch for  _ years. _ Dean  _ trusts  _ this guy, has opened up his car, his arsenal, his whole life to him—given up  _ everything  _ he’s ever cared about! Given up their  _ dad,  _ believing that’s what he really wants!

And that’s not even taking into account—a shudder runs through him, horror sinking cold into his stomach—their ostensible marriage, the cuddling, the ass grabs and dick pics and the kisses at the bar. That wasn’t an act. Cas is gay as hell, and straight-as-a-ruler, hyper-masculine, ladies’ man Dean, presumably love-potioned into believing he wanted it, has let this guy do, just,  _ anything— _

He covers his mouth with his hand, stomach in his throat.

He never knew. Never even checked on Dean, not once. Sam had cut contact so completely Dean couldn’t even reach him when he needed help, when he was being cornered and doped up with magic and… and… and…

The guilt overwhelms him. He needs a drink, needs several dozen drinks, a bottle even. He hasn’t been there for his brother, and just look what happened. This is on him. This is on Sam, and on Dad, for leaving him to hunt alone like that.

But no—Sam couldn’t help that. Couldn’t do anything about it then, and can’t do anything to change the past now. But he can sure as hell change the present. Sam pushes the guilt down, clenches his fists around it until it turns into hard diamonds of anger.

He’s got to think, got to approach this carefully and methodically. Dad probably discovered Cas too, alerted by Dean’s uncharacteristic announcement he was quitting hunting, and tried to intervene; that’s how he ended up in prison. Bobby—there’s no telling what’s going on there, but Bobby has to have been bespelled too, to stay living here and abetting the two in their “love” story in the middle of all this.

Sam can’t go to either of them; he has to figure out how to save Dean by himself. He has research to do.


	4. The Ambush

The next night, Sam is waiting in Cas’ kitchen with a gun full of witch-killing bullets and a machete for back-up.

He’s been nursing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s all afternoon, partly to dull the guilt and partly to keep his mettle up. It’s been so long since he did something like this. A hunt, an actual stake-out with intent to kill. His hands keep shaking, and he clenches them tight around the glass.

All the time he spent at Bobby’s that morning has only solidified his worst fears. He’s gone through the lore books and found the hex bag ingredients are for maintaining a spell long-term. The hearts in the freezer are probably ingredients too, though he doesn’t know for what. The love potion, most likely. Something that would mess with Dean’s rationality, get him into bed with the bastard.

Sam is suffused with rage at the idea of his brother being essentially roofied and used like that. And he’s certain now that Bobby’s been compromised, too; when Sam had asked him for any reference books on witches, Bobby had just looked at him and told him to mind his own business. Whatever he’d gotten into, he said, Sam should leave it alone because no one was getting hurt here.

Bobby would never give up on one of them like that if he weren’t also under the witch’s influence.

Staring down at his phone, Sam re-checks his last text message.

_ Hey, can you meet me rn? _

_ really need to talk, just u and me _

_ jess called and im a mess _

Dean still hasn’t replied. With any luck, he’ll get the message soon and head right back out, leaving the witch alone to walk into the house on their return. It’s not great that he’s had to resort to lying again so soon after their long falling-out, but he’ll do whatever it takes to spare his brother from any more pain.

It’s almost time. The patient support group or whatever they were going to gets out at 8:00pm, so he can guess that they’ll be home any minute. He takes one last drink from the open bottle—only one; he remembers the hunting rules about not drinking on the job—to calm his nerves and steady his hand so he’ll be able to aim.

The door opens and Sam can hear two sets of shoes enter the house. Damn it, Dean! He couldn’t have dropped everything for Sam the way he does for everyone else? Not even this once?

But it doesn’t matter. He’s ready. He’ll break whatever spell is on Dean just as soon as the witch is taken care of.

He stands and picks up the revolver from the kitchen table.

Cas enters the kitchen first and freezes under Sam’s gun. Dean comes in just behind him, stops in shock and then immediately steps forward, face like thunder and radiating absolute fury.

“Sam, you dumb fuck—!”

Sam shakes his head, mouth pursed with regret. “I’m sorry, Dean. I know you’re not gonna like this right now, but trust me, you’ll be grateful once it’s over.” He levels his guns and squeezes the trigger on Cas, who’s still frozen in shock.

Dean lunges for him.

_ “No!” _

The gun goes off, Sam’s arm knocked aside. The witch is still standing. Dean rips the weapon away and throws it across the room, but Sam kicks him into the counter before he can attempt any kind of hold.

Cas is shouting at him from the entrance to the kitchen. Sam pulls the machete instead; beheading will work just as well. He shoves Dean off him a second time to head for Cas. Dean throws himself onto Sam’s back, and they whirl around the room for a split second before crashing into some cupboards. Cas, only a few steps away, has backed himself sideways into corner. Sam twists and raises the machete again.

Dean grabs Sam’s machete hand by the wrist and presses his body up into Sam’s way, wrestling him back at full strength.

“Sam!” Dean snarls in his face. “Sam, stop!”

Sam yanks on his arm, trying to pull free and shove Dean away at the same time, but Dean is pushing forward, keeps  _ pushing and pushing _ , other hand clenched in Sam’s hair,

“Get off, Dean!”

“Stop, you fucking—”

He tries again to throw Dean off with his full weight only for there to be a chair there somehow, and Dean stumbles and doesn’t fall the way Sam thought he would fall, and instead pulls hard on Sam’s shoulder just as Sam’s shoving the machete hand, hilt still gripped tight in his fist, and he’s off-balance, his arms go out reflexively—

There’s a heart-chilling, half-strangled, high-pitch noise out of Dean’s throat.

Everything freezes.

Everyone just stops moving, and Sam’s machete hand, still gripped at the wrist by Dean, is suddenly wet with hot, thick liquid.

_ No, _ Sam thinks.  _ No. No, no, no, no— _

Dean stumbles forward with him as he instinctively tries to pull the weapon out, to undo what’s been done.

The blade comes free, and the torrent of blood pours out after it, followed by a horrific tumble of something from under Dean’s shirt. Dean hits the floor on his knees with his full weight, not even catching himself. Cas dives forward after him from the corner with a little wail.

_ “DEAN—!” _

Eyes wide and fixed on Sam, Dean is pulled back onto his husband’s lap by Cas, who is shaking and clutching at his shoulders and chest. Carefully, Cas peels up the shirt, already soaked deep red, to reveal the damage.

Dean’s stomach gapes wide open, sliced from the soft side under his lower ribs to his navel, intestines pulled out and hanging down to his knees in a heavy, obscene pile.

Bright red blood gushes in arterial jets all over the floor in a rapidly spreading pool that is already way too much for survivability. Dean’s face is white, mouth opening and closing in silent gasps like a fish, eyes glassy and unfocused. He moves his face and hands toward Cas. Sam stumbles back, stunned numb in horror.

“Dean! Oh god, Dean, no, please—!” Cas is crying, gasping and pawing at the wound, trying to shove Dean’s guts back in and apply pressure from a terrible angle. Sam trips backward further and hits the wall and just stares in horror at what he’s done. Cas is still pushing intestines and blood back into the wound like it will help.

Dean shakes his head, turns it into Cas’ chest and mumbles, “I’m ok, I’m ok—”

“You’re not ok, Dean!” Cas sobs.

“I’m ok, you can’t kill me with—ugh.” He struggles to sit up, and Cas is holding him down by his shoulders in his lap. “You can’t kill me with a gut wound, Cas. It’s just a regular machete.”

“It’s just a—” Cas repeats mindlessly and then breaks into a really awful, tearful, hysterical laugh.

“It’s just a machete, babe,” Dean rasps again, voice growing stronger. “It’s not silver.”

Then, miraculously, Dean sits back up and onto his knees. He leans heavily on Cas, still bleeding and breathing hard, obviously hurting, but the color is coming back into his face. His eyes slowly clear, alive and alert.

Cas is a wreck, still clutching Dean’s shoulders and trembling like he’s about to completely fall apart. Sam takes one staggering step toward his brother through the puddles of blood smeared on the linoleum, only to freeze under their glares.

Dean is clawed and fanged, and his face is fuzzy. Sam stares at him.

“It’s not silver, babe,” Dean repeats to Cas, regaining his breath slowly and staring intently into Sam’s eyes as he does, making sure Sam hears every word. “Werewolves don’t die unless they’re beheaded or hit with silver.”

Sam doesn’t know what else to do.

He turns and flees out the front door.


	5. The Talk

Sam flees aimlessly into the night, tripping and climbing blindly over the undergrowth for what could be minutes or hours, unaware of anything but the shocking truth now pounding in his brain: Dean is a monster. Dean is a monster, and Sam almost killed him.

Out of breath and scraped to hell by twigs and branches, he slowly comes back to himself wandering in the woods alongside the road he’d walked to get there from Bobby’s. It occurs to him half-consciously in the back of his head that he’s too exposed that way, and he climbs up the slope further into the trees, distraught and confused. He doesn’t know if they’re following him. If they do follow him, he doesn’t know if it will be to yell at him or kill him.

He doesn’t know whether he has to fight back if they do. Does he have to kill his brother now? Dad had trained them to. They’d been raised to know immediately when they’d been turned by something, to know whether it was permanent and whether they had to kill themselves in order to not kill other people. Werewolves were definitely on the immediate suicide list.

But Sam can’t do it. He doesn’t want to kill Dean. He thought he  _ had  _ killed him, just now, and nothing, NOTHING had ever felt as awful as those thirty seconds. And he’s not a hunter anyway. But what if other hunters come? What if someone comes to kill Dean, and Sam’s still—

Headlights pass through the trees on his left and slow to a stop a dozen yards away. Tires crunch on the gravel off the side of the road. Sam hears the slam of a truck door, and he automatically moves further into the forest to avoid the coming confrontation.

Before he can go far, a branch breaks behind him and he hears his name.

“Sam.”

He turns around to see a familiar silhouette holding a flashlight on him.

“Bobby, I—I—I—”

Bobby’s eyes and flashlight move down Sam’s arm to his wrist, and he realizes he’s still holding the machete, coated in blood. His whole arm is coated in blood, all the way up to the elbow.

He drops the machete hard enough that he practically throws it.

“Bobby, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I just wanted—”

“Easy, boy. We know what you wanted.”

“I thought he was a witch, Bobby. I thought he was hurting Dean. I thought he was controlling him. I swear, I thought he was hurting him. God, I’m just so confused, I don’t know anymore—”

“Maybe you oughtta take a seat for a minute.”

“I thought he was a witch—”

“I know you did. And you weren’t wrong, exactly. Sit down.”

Bobby herds Sam down onto a fallen tree trunk, narrow in diameter but enough to support him the way he’s practically levitating on it. Clapping a hand on his shoulder to keep him there, Bobby leans in and inspects his face. Sam shivers, whether from cold or the remaining terror of having almost killed his own brother, he doesn’t know. He thinks there’s a good chance he’s going to be sick.

“I didn’t want to do this out here. It gets cold fast, as you’re noticin’, and I reckon the woods aren’t a real safe place to be when you can’t see what’s coming at you. If I lead you back down to my truck, you gonna be able to follow?”

Sam just stares at him, and then nods.

“Ok. We’re heading down, then.”

Bobby picks up the machete and they climb down through pitch black trees and tangled brambles, rocks and rotted places, and Sam nearly turns his ankle once or twice even with the help of Bobby’s flashlight. The skies above them are flush with blazing stars, brighter than Sam’s ever seen in California. He can see his breath in the light from the headlights, but he doesn’t feel cold. He doesn’t feel anything, physically, except waning adrenaline and an overwhelming, crushing fear.

His voice cracks, but he manages to speak. “He hates me, now.”

“He ain’t too keen to see you, I’ll give you that. Neither of ‘em are. But let’s just save that conversation for later, after we have a chance to clarify a thing or two, and everybody’s hackles have a chance to wind back down a little.”

Bobby opens his door to the driver’s side of the tow truck, and waits, giving Sam a significant look, until Sam does the same and crawls into the passenger’s side. They both shut their doors and Sam stares straight ahead, unseeing through the darkness and the lit-up road and trees ahead of them. Bobby cranks the heater up and then turns the truck around, pointing it toward his home.

“Ok, now,” Bobby begins with a resigned breath. “What do you know? Or what did you suspect, let’s go with that. I got a call ten minutes ago saying you came after Castiel with a machete, and that’s pretty much all I got of it.”

Sam shudders and closes his eyes. “I thought Cas was a witch. He had hex bags in the—somebody had hex bags in the spare room and there were human hearts and stuff. The wards had changed, Dean was acting weird—”

“Dean changed the wards because he couldn’t get in to drive his own damn car with the old ones. Wards to keep the supernatural out work on werewolves. Same goes for the house.”

“Then the witch, that’s, that’s him, too?”

Bobby grunts. “No. You were right on that, Cas is using a little extra oomf to keep Dean sane, human-shaped, and non-man-eating during the lunar cycle. Got a fancy combination of under-the-table meds and outright witchery to cure him from the impulses, completely. Sort of a lifetime treatment plan, but the boy knows his stuff. Put his heart and soul into working it out to save Dean.”

Sam stares at him across the cabin. “…What happened to him?”

“What do you think? Boy went after a werewolf on his own, like that damn fool who calls himself your father taught him, and this time he got bit. Think it was about… five years ago now, outside Granby.”

“Five years… when he met Cas?”

“Just before, yeah. He…” Bobby looks extremely reluctant and sorry to have to bring this up. “You aren’t to use this against him, mind, but I guess it’s better you know now than later. He killed a man, Sam, right as soon as the bite took that very same night. Doesn’t remember much, far as I can tell, but it haunts him. Badly, even today. He was ready to off himself over it, but it didn’t take on the first try and he got scared to try again. Killing a werewolf ain’t easy, even for a werewolf.” He eyes Sam sideways, sort of disapprovingly.

“Anyway, he went stumbling up into the National Park here to work himself up again to a second attempt, and that where Cas found him. Cas hunts things, but not like you or me used to. He hunts ‘em down so he can save ‘em.”

This is shocking enough that it breaks through Sam’s veil of self-loathing to make him twist in his seat.

“Save them? How? Why?”

Bobby licks his lips like he’s gearing up to give a well-practiced speech. “The way Cas sees it, werewolfism, along with vampirism and rugaru-ism and kitsunes and wraiths and pishtacos and whatever the hell else you might got, that’s all just, how’s he put it? ‘Under-researched medical conditions.’ I guess he was working at some big hospital in Denver back in ’04 and a vamp girl came in, asked what was wrong with her because she honestly didn’t know. That was Charlie, by the way.”

Bobby glances at Sam to see if he recognizes the name. He’s got no face in his memory to go with it. The barbeque had been packed, and Sam has had other issues on his mind.

“As it happens, Cas didn’t know either, and that spurred him to do a little research. He and Charlie worked out what her symptoms were, what situations triggered the teeth and bloodlust and all that, abilities and so on, and then just… figured something out. Now she takes a supplement for anemia and some drug that kills her appetite, and Cas had to go deep into some lore books to work out spells and such that would complement the baseline treatment to keep her healthy and not, y’know, suicidally fighting her own instincts. They got it balanced though, eventually. And then Cas, being Cas, couldn’t let it rest at that, and had to go digging deeper into the lore and witchcraft and all that to see who else he could save. Figured out vampires, rugarus, wraiths, in that order. Dean was his first werewolf. Took a while, kept Dean in his basement under lock and key for about six months, but finally they got that solved, too. And Cas was able to talk him around into believing that he deserved it, after killing that guy. That was a whole second battle in itself.”

It takes a moment to sink in, but once it does, he can see how that would be. Dean was always very black and white on the monster killing issue.

And god—his brother had been suicidal, _had already_ _actively tried to kill himself_ at least once, and Sam hadn’t known about it. Sam had cut himself off from contact so completely that Dean couldn’t have reached him if he tried.

And he probably  _ did  _ try. He probably did call Sam for help, scared and hurting with his own goddamn gun at his own temple, and Sam hadn’t been there. Sam hadn’t even answered the phone.

The guilt is overwhelming.

Bobby seems to misinterpret his silence, because his voice gets more defensive. “If you’re wondering why we didn’t just tell you straight off, we couldn’t risk it. Not after what happened with John.”

“What happened with John?”

Bobby makes a disgusted noise. “Exactly what you’d guess happened with John. He figured out what had gone down with the werewolf hunt. Wasn’t hard—Dean had left a whole slew of desperate voicemails telling him things had gone wrong and begging him to come. Son of a bitch figured it could wait and took his damn time. Two whole weeks before he even calls back. Dean’s with Cas by then and tries to brush it off at that point, but John gets suspicious, starts researching and somehow figures out his boy’s gone moon-side. Calls Dean up and tells him to eat a bullet.”

“No.”

“He did, and you always knew he would. ‘S part of why you left him, ain’t it?”

Sam feels sick to his stomach, but it’s absolutely true. John’s belief that the job had to come first was absolute. He’d have framed it as saving innocent lives, but the results were the same.

“Dean tells John, look, there’s a cure now and I’m not dangerous. John calls bullshit and Dean offers to let him see.”

“Tell me he didn’t meet him somewhere.”

“He met him somewhere. Left Cas behind, which was smart of him. Left Grand County altogether and gave John the number of a motel room over in Boulder. Showed up on a full moon night and waited for your daddy to come confirm he was sane, and give his approval.”

Sam just looks at Bobby in despair.

“Did he even knock?”

Bobby nods cynically.

“He did that much. Went in, closed the door, looked Dean right between the eyes, saw him sane and in control as could be, and said he was sorry, and he’d follow him into death after. Took out his silver knife and tried to slash Dean’s throat right there.”

Sam’s hands shake and he rubs his face.

“Dean made it out, obviously. It was touch and go for a while, but he limped on back to Cas and got healed up once the silver cauterization was excised. It was pretty gruesome, even for me.”

“You were there.”

“Not right away. They were still in Boulder at that point. Cas called me up on Dean’s phone, said Dean was unconscious, maybe dying, and he was afraid to go home because a hunter was still on their tail. Said Dean had always spoke highly of me, and spilled the whole can of beans right there, asked for help.”

Bobby looks grim as anything.

“First I’d heard of the boy in months, and I thought I was driving down to build him a pyre. Shit.”

Bobby goes quiet for a bit and wipes his face, glaring balefully through the windshield at the dark empty road ahead of them. Eventually, he speaks again.

“So I get down there, and they’ve pulled over and holed up in some barn outside town. Cas had tossed Dean’s phone out the car window after texting me his own number, which was smart because we later learned John was tracking it. We get Dean put back together, Cas watching me the whole time like I’m gonna turn and murder his boyfriend any second. We ramble for a while, confusing our trail as much as possible until we’re sure we’ve lost John, and then head on back to Granby, where Cas was livin’. I’m damn near useless the whole time, other than providing a second set of eyes to keep watch so Cas can sleep.”

Bobby hesitates, pulling onto the road that goes to his house with a grim set to his lips.

“Coast seems clear for a year after that. The boys get married, Dean changes his name and they move out to Grand Lake to try to keep Dean off the grid, open up the satellite office specifically for the monster folk. I sell the place up in Sioux Falls and come down to join ‘em. That’s when John shows up outta nowhere on Dean’s trail and kills two whole families of shifters right in their beds.”

He pulls into the driveway and turns off the truck, but doesn’t move or get out. After a minute, he turns to Sam, face inscrutable in the dark.

“That’s the point I’m trying to make here, Sam. This ain’t about you. It ain’t about your relationship with your brother, or your father, and it ain’t even about Dean and Cas. It’s about some two hundred innocent people in this town who’ve been dealt a hard enough hand already, and who’ve done their damndest to get the help they need so they won’t hurt anybody. That’s what’s on the line, here.”

Sam stares at his silhouette through the darkness and wishes he could read his face. There’s a challenge in Bobby’s voice, like this is some kind of test, and Sam can’t even imagine the point of telling him now. Still, the thought is so phenomenal that he has too know.

“Two hundred—You’re telling me the whole town—”

“Just under half of it, yeah. Cas and those doc partners of his, Bal and Hannah—they’ve got that little satellite clinic supporting the treatment of the biggest underground community of supernatural creatures I’ve ever heard of in history, and they’re doing a damn fine job. And now the question is, Sam, what are you gonna do?”

Sam is baffled at first. Then it hits him, and his stomach drops; Bobby’s working himself up to do something he doesn’t want to do if Sam goes dark-side, and that hurts more than anything he’s heard tonight.

“Bobby! I, I would never—”

“You just did, boy. What else do you call what you just tried to do?”

Sam shrinks back, a fresh wave of self-loathing washing over him. What Bobby said is true.

Bobby’s silhouette is still hard, ready to do whatever he has to. Even against Sam. He might think he needs to kill him, might even be steeling himself for that possibility even now.

Sam had thought he felt alone after losing Jess and her connections in the divorce, but that was nothing to what he feels now.  _ This  _ is what it feels like to truly be alone. To be on the outside, even with Bobby and Dean.

“I swear to you, Bobby,” he says in desperation, shaking his head. “I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t think. I didn’t think about it, I only—I only wanted to protect my brother.”

Bobby stares at him another good long minute, and Sam feels like he’s dying inside.

Finally, Bobby lets out a sighs and massages his temples, shoulders relaxing.

“I know you did, Sam. I know. But I just don’t—balls, why’d you have to turn out so much like your old man?”

This is a whole new kind of shock, an attack that goes right through him. Meanwhile, Bobby opens the truck door and starts to get out. The dome light comes on, spilling over the cabin and his face. He looks tired, and full of aged grief.

“I’m not!” Sam protests, aghast.

“You don’t think so, huh?” Bobby turns around in the open door to peer skeptically at him, dragging a hand over his face.

“No!”

“So you aren’t a self-righteous workaholic with a drinking problem?”

Sam stares in extended shock.

Bobby sighs again. “You didn’t leave your family behind as soon as they started getting in the way of some personal mission.”

“College wasn’t some personal mis—” Sam protests weakly.

“You didn’t decide for yourself that Dean’s word on the matter wasn’t important, your instincts were better trusted in going after Cas.”

Sam’s mind races. “That’s not—”

“Dean told you what he wanted,  _ who _ he wanted, and you didn’t believe him because you couldn’t imagine it fitting your little view of him.”

Sam’s mouth opens, but no noise comes out. Dad did exactly that. To him.

“Tell me you don’t have a drinking problem, Sam.”

He doesn’t have a drinking problem. He never gets drunk. Everyone he knows drinks as much as he does, or nearly, anyway. Except Jess. And Jess’ family. The neighbors, probably, but he always assumed they were, like, Mormon or something. Right?

“Tell me you don’t have a problem,” Bobby repeats.

“I… I don’t…”

His voice trails off. He doesn’t know. Dad did. Dad got drunk sometimes, would turn mean, but always kept it together when he did, always stayed sharp. Functional. High performing.

Bobby looks really sad for a minute, like he’s waiting Sam out. There’s nothing to wait for. Sam couldn’t find words right now if his life depended on it.

Finally, Bobby speaks again.

“I know I’m in no position to talk, and maybe I never modeled right for you boys. God knows I’ve got my own demons to deal with when it comes to the hard stuff. But maybe there’s something to that old adage, ‘takes one to know one.’ How many drinks have you had this week, Sam?”

Five on Sunday. He was driving, so he held off until he reached the hotel.

Seven, no, eight on Monday, when he got maudlin at the bar and Cas had to drive him home.

Nine yesterday, between the six-pack starting at 11:00am and the three he had at the barbeque.

Four today.

No. Five today.

He stares at Bobby.

Bobby’s still staring back, sad.

“…I got divorced,” Sam whispers.

But a little voice in his head pipes up:  _ objection, relevance, _ because he knows he had seven the day before she packed up and told him she was leaving. He’d always had three every night to unwind after work, and on Fridays, when the whole office went out for drinks…

The wind whipping through the truck’s open doors is near freezing, despite it being July, and Bobby’s got to be cold in nothing more than his parka and trucker hat. Sam himself feels like his hands have turned to ice. But Bobby just keeps standing there patiently.

“I think I have a problem, Uncle Bobby.”

“You sure do, son.”

~

They go inside the house, and Bobby makes decaf while Sam sits at the kitchen table, his life in shambles and his confidence torn to bits.

Everything he’d been sure of—the foundation underpinning all his decisions, his self-image, all of it—was predicated on the rejection of John’s willful ignorance, his anti-social bigotry, his all-consuming obsession. Sam was going to be different. Sam was going to be  _ better _ than him. How on earth did he go so wrong?

“Jody’s the one who put him away,” Bobby says, placing a cup in front of Sam and interrupting his rumination. Sam looks up at him.

“She’s the local sheriff. In on it all, ‘course. Showed up just in time to stop him going to the mat with Dean, but not soon enough for the shifter kids hiding under their beds, pumped full of silver poisoning. She got him with more than enough evidence to insist on doing things the legal way, at any rate. John was arrested on charges of serial killing.”

“Dean mentioned he was in prison,” Sam says numbly.

“Yeah. Multiple life sentences. He ain’t gettin’ out again.”

Bobby takes a long drink of his coffee, letting Sam chew on that for a while.

“Listen,” he says at last. “I think you oughtta give Dean and Cas a wide berth for a while. They were pretty rightly pissed on the phone when they asked me to pick you up. I don’t think your apology’d be particularly welcome right now.”

“Is Dean okay?” Sam asks quietly.

“He’s healed up, if that’s what you’re askin’. Can’t say I’d call ranting and pacing around the house at this hour ‘okay’. Cas also had some choice things to say about the smashed-up kitchen and the bullet in the ceiling.”

Sam wilts further, curling into himself in the chair.

“Just give ‘em a few days,” Bobby says gruffly, pouring himself a second cup at the counter. “Maybe a week or two. Or a month. Then you crawl back and grovel your heart out. I think they  _ might  _ not want to kick the shit outta you by that point, but no promises.”

Sam shakes his head in despair, staring through the table into the kitchen floor.

“What do I do, Bobby? He’s never gonna wanna talk to me again.”

“And that’s something you care about, suddenly?”

Sam looks up to see Bobby’s giving him a look, eyebrow raised.

Sam winces.

“I know, I… I fucked up so hard. God, I—” His throat tightens and his eyes burn as he looks back down at the coffee on the table.

“Aw, hell.” The chair pulls out beside him as Bobby sits down with his cup.

“Look, I’ll tell you what you do next. You get sober, and you stay that way. It won’t undo the mistakes you’ve made, but at least it might stop you making new ones.”

“Ok. Yeah, ok.” He nods and sniffles.

“And then you gotta figure out what kind of relationship you want with your brother before you do anything else, and what you gotta do to earn that relationship. Because I’m telling you now, eleven years of silence ain’t a real good start on that account.”

“Ok.”

Bobby looks at Sam’s hangdog expression, and then softens and looks sad again.

“Listen, I can’t speak for Dean, and I’ve never been much good at predicting what that boy’s gonna do anyway. I can’t tell you if he’s ever gonna get over what you pulled last night. But what I can tell you is that you’ve got a real job to do, either way. If you can’t kick that bottle for you, and I mean for  _ you,  _ not out of some sort of misguided hope for forgiveness, this shit’ll follow you around the same way it did your dad. But you’re smarter than him, and I think you can do better. You hear me?”

“Yeah, Bobby. I hear you.”

“Good.” Bobby breathes out in a rush, takes a last drink of his coffee and then stands up. “Now I for one am headed for bed. I got work in the morning.”

~

Waking at Bobby’s the next morning, Sam has to take a minute just to breathe, bowed forward on the couch under the renewed realization of everything he’d fucked up the night before.

With his face in his hands, he makes a silent vow that this will be the worst of it. This will be his lowest point, where he turns everything around. He’s not touching one more drink, not ever. He’s not taking anything for granted ever again.

He wants his relationship with his brother back.

Everything else in his life can take a back seat until he fixes what he’s done to ruin it.

Pacing around the house, fidgety and tense, he tries to plan. He’s going to have to throw out all of his wines when he gets back to Sierra Madre. The bourbon, too. There are probably some beers in the fridge, although he might’ve gone through them before leaving; he isn’t sure. The Friday after-work events will have to go on hold for a while.

As for mending fences with Dean and Cas, Bobby had told him to wait on the apology, but he can’t just  _ not  _ say anything. What, he lies in wait in their kitchen at night, tries to kill them, and then—oops? Disappears into the woods? Pops back up a month later with a sheepish grin and a “my bad?” Right.

Against Bobby’s advice, he cleans up and heads down the street in his car. There’s not a doubt in his mind that Dean won’t hear him out until he’s apologized to Cas first, so that simplifies his starting place, anyway. It crosses his mind to maybe pick up some flowers or something as an olive branch on the way, but he discards the idea almost immediately. There’s nothing he could give them that would balance out his actions last night, and even the attempt might come across as downplaying it. No, he’ll go the simple and authentic route. Total prostration, total commitment to anything they ask.

He just hopes there’s still something to salvage.

Pulling into a spot near the satellite clinic, he sees Cas working in the driveway, white coat and everything, talking to a father holding a little girl.

Sam gets out of the car, and they both turn and look at him, expressions darkening in an instant. Shit, word spreads fast in this town.

“Um…” he starts, uncomfortable under their twin stares.

Cas mouths something short and urgent to the father, and then hurries him toward a waiting SUV. The man turns so his body is between Sam and the little girl, glaring back over his shoulder protectively as he rushes through fastening the car seat.

“I’m not—I’m not here to, uh… do stuff,” Sam says miserably. “I swear.”

Eyes narrowing, Cas doesn’t reply. He keeps himself between the vehicle and Sam, his back to the family as they pull away.

“You don’t have to worry or anything. I’m just—”

The car disappears around a corner, and Cas immediately turns, strides back into the clinic, and slams the door shut behind him.

The deadbolt clicks before Sam can even take a step after him.

“Please, Cas! I just—”

He turns from the door to the front window, only for the blinds to drop and shut. A hand reaches around them to flip the  _ ‘Come in - We’re Open’ _ sign to  _ ‘Sorry, we’re closed,’ _ and then vanishes again.

“Please!” Sam calls through the door, heart sinking. “I just want to apologize! I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to—well, I meant to, but I, I, I wasn’t—I didn’t understand. Please. Please let me in.”

He waits for a minute, and then a minute more, but there’s nothing. Not a sound, not even a twitch of the blinds.

Sam sinks down onto steps, at a loss for what else to do.

“I’m so sorry, Castiel,” he says again to the door, in case Cas is listening. “I was wrong. I was wrong, and I should never have come back into Dean’s life. Please, I only want to apologize to him. To you.”

He hovers around a while longer, but no one comes out. Increasingly anxious and frustrated, he starts pulling up blades of grass one by one and impatiently tosses them into the wind. He doesn’t have anywhere to be or anything to do. He wishes he had a drink, but that’s obviously out.

Giving up on the front step, he eventually stands and putters around the sides of the building, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of someone inside through a window, but they’re all shaded up too.

Returning to the front door, he tries again.

“I know you’re helping people!” he shouts, feeling stupid. “I know that now, and I really admire that! Is there—Is there any way I could try to, y’know, make it up to you? Please? Cas? Please just let me in.”

Behind him, there’s a shockingly loud, aborted half-second WHOOP of a police siren, and Sam jumps and spins around.

The sheriff’s white and blue Expedition is idling in the middle of the street. The short-haired woman at the wheel watches him coldly from behind dark shades. She stares at him for few silent seconds, and then makes a meaningful nod toward his parked car.

Sam gets the message. He goes back to Bobby’s.

~

Back at Bobby’s, he paces in the kitchen and bites at a hangnail left over from the previous night’s fight.

“I should just go to the garage. He won’t wanna see me, but we can have it out. I can let him punch me a few times. He’ll yell, I’ll grovel, and we’ll be over it.”

“Don’t be an idjit,” Bobby says, working on invoices at the kitchen table. “I already told you not to push your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. You couldn’t even do that right, and now you’ve got his protective instincts all fired up.”

“I wanted to apologize to Cas.”

“You stalked him to his workplace after trying to kill him, and upset his patients enough that he called the cops on you. Now you wanna go mess with Dean’s work day too? You may have forgotten this, boy, but  _ I also _ rely on those customers for a paycheck.”

Sam tosses his aching head back and collapses on the arm of the ratty old sofa.

“Maybe I should just go back to L.A.,” he mumbles, planting his face into his hands. “There’s nothing I can do here. I’m only making it worse by hanging around.”

Bobby looks resigned. “Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea, but maybe you should wait until you’re detoxed. You stay serious about this sobriety thing, and it’s gonna hit you hard in the next couple of days or so.”

“I know,” Sam sighs. “I know that, but knowing that Dean’s—that Dean’s this angry at me, and having nothing to do about it? I gotta stay occupied, Bobby. I can handle the drive. I’ll pull over and stop for the night if it gets bad.”

“That’s a damn fool idea, Sam.”

“I know, but I need to go, Bobby. I’ll be able to handle it. I have to.”

Bobby’s skeptical, but wishes him luck. Sam asks Bobby again to convey how sorry he is, and they share one last rough hug before Sam gets in his car for the drive back to California.


	6. Cold Turkey

Sam starts back to California with his tail between his legs.

The national forest makes for gorgeous driving, all endless conifers and stark blue skies, but the anxiety and frustration are a constant buzz under his skin that only worsen the farther he gets from civilization.

He’s never alienated Dean to this extent before—not knowingly anyway. Even when he left for Stanford, he’d always believed in the back of his mind that there was a way back waiting for him if he chose to take it. Dean probably hates him now. He’s burned every bridge he ever made, first with Jess and her friends, Dad, now Dean… Even Bobby has no reason to put up with him, other than sheer pity for his idiocy.

Realizing his fingers have migrated to his mouth again, he consciously put them back on the steering wheel and keeps them there. Biting his nails is something he hasn’t done since he was thirteen.

There’s got to be something he can do. Even from out of state, there’s got to be some way he can communicate to Dean that he’s sorry, that he wants to redeem himself for all the shitty things he’s done. Despite Sam’s stupidity for over a decade, no one, not even Jess, has ever been as fundamental or important in his life as his brother. He can’t believe how long he’d taken that loyalty for granted. And now that it’s gone, it’s like a cornerstone of his very identity has gone with it.

There’s gotta be something. He can’t let it all end over something as stupid as this.

Mile marker after mile marker passes by, and he finds himself grinding his teeth. He rub the joints of his jaw with one hand to get them to relax, and then shifts to running his free hand through his hair over and over again. A little pile of shed strands begins to build up over his shoulders and lap. He holds up his hand in surprise at the number of hairs tangled between the fingers, and realizes that he’s shaking.

It takes a while to sink in, but then he realizes. This is not just the stress of the divorce or the debacle with Dean and his new husband. This is withdrawal.

Bobby was right.

He has an alcohol problem.

Gritting his teeth, he tries to distract himself by counting backward in his head, glad that there’s no one in the car with him. The irritability is so strong that he feels like he could kick a puppy right now. But he can handle it. He just has to push through it. Lots of people quit drinking every day, and Sam’s no weak-willed lush. He may be a self-centered asshole, but he’s also a high-functioning, high-pressure corporate litigator with military-esque training on the side.

He’s in control. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s knowing himself, his own strengths and limits.

He just has to push through it.

~

Four hours into the drive, the withdrawal starts to really kick in full force. It’s more than he’d honestly expected—he’s sweating, hands tingling, and the nausea is starting to rise in his gorge. His headache is building up to migraine levels, and his muscles ache with tension.

He’s barely at Grand Junction, not even the Utah border.

“Just twenty more miles to the next Motel 6,” he mumbles to himself. “Just twenty miles. I can do twenty more miles.”

An eternity passes, and he looks at the clock in the dash. It seems to be broken. It hasn’t changed from the current display for at least the last fifteen minutes, he’s sure of it.

Eventually, another mile marker goes by.

He mumbles again.

“Nineteen miles. I can do nineteen more miles.”

~

The Motel 6 in Grand Junction is a long, flat, two-story structure of white paint and concrete with TVs twenty years old and the ugliest tie-dye blue bedspreads he’s ever seen.

Somehow he makes it from the car to the front desk without registering his body moving. He checks in early, gives them his credit card for a three-day stay while he deals with the ‘flu’, and eats a sandwich from the nearby gas station in his room for dinner, but the nausea gets worse and he throws it up around 1:00am. He thought he’d reached the peak of it before, but this is worse than he thought and he’s starting to have second thoughts about not having stayed at Bobby’s.

The first night passes, and then two more.

This is so, so much worse than he’d expected.

He lies around the motel room all day and suffers, nauseated and achy, shaking in the bed. The only interruptions are periodic spurts in which he relocates his moaning to the bathroom.

The sound of happy kids playing in the outdoor pool just outside his room drifts through the thin walls, unmooring him in space and time. He’s never been here. He’s always been here, since his earliest childhood memories. He’s escaped here only to fall back again, trapped by fate and some genetic destiny to become his father. He doesn’t eat a thing; he can barely stomach water. He keeps the lights off and curtains closed, and tries to sleep as much as possible, but his brain just won’t turn off. He wishes he had a drink.

Sam is pretty sure death is a real possible outcome of cold turkey alcohol withdrawal, but his head hurts too much to risk turning on his phone or laptop to check Google. Three days without sleep are probably not good for the blood pressure or something.

He’s pretty sure he isn’t dying, anyway. Mostly sure. He’s felt worse, he thinks, like that one time as a teenager on a ‘family camping trip,’ when he was grabbed by a wendigo and left strung up in a cave for half a day, upside down and blood dribbling up his leg to his hip from the gash left in his ankle. But it’s fifty-fifty. At least then he wasn’t fighting a fever and he had the intermittent relief of unconsciousness to look forward to.

Dean had saved him, back then. Shown up in the wendigo’s cave like a flame-thrower-wielding hero, shouting for help and telling him he was gonna be okay. He remembers how Dean carried him, legs numb and not working right from the hours he’d spent suspended. Dean had been so focused on him, so absolute in his dedication, swearing to Sam that he’d be fine. That they’d get him to a hospital and the leg problem would wear off and he’d be walking again in no time. And if he wasn’t, Dean would carry him around piggyback-style til the end of time, as much as he wanted, swore it on Mom’s own grave.

That was love, then. That was love and he didn’t even see it, see how rare and valuable it was.

He thinks about Jess, about Dean, and even Bobby, how everything he touches seems to just go right to shit. He thinks about how angry Dean must be now to not want to even see him, how Cas rejected his attempt to apologize on the office lawn. He thinks about all the shitty stuff Dean forgave him for as a kid, the tantrums over the last bowl of cereal when Dean was starving and hadn’t eaten all day; the rejection of his shitty birthday presents; the blame for Dean not being able to control their dad. How betrayed Dean had looked when Sam drove away for Stanford after not even telling him he’d applied. How Dean had tried to call twice only for Sam to refuse his calls, and then to ditch his phone and buy a new one with a different number, specifically so he couldn’t be reached, and still Dean had welcomed him back when he just turned up out of nowhere.

How awful it must have been for Dean to have found someone who loved him back the way he always should’ve been loved, only for Dad to show up and try to kill him after everything Dean had always given up for him.

How much worse it must have been to have Sam show up and do exactly the same damn thing.

Dean will never forgive him now. Will never look at him like he’d looked that night in the wendigo’s cave again.

Sam rolls over on the thin-carpeted floor by the open bathroom door, dragging himself to his hands and knees to crawl back over to the toilet. He throws up in the porcelain bowl and then leans his head against the cool, smooth side and cries on it pathetically for a while.

~

It’s the fifth or sixth day of sobriety before he’s ready to slink back into the car and endure the remaining eleven hours back to his place in Sierra Madre. He collapses across the couch as soon as he’s inside, just grateful to be home again, not even bothering to go upstairs. He sleeps again for another full night, head pounding and half-dreaming fretfully about whether or not he’s even remembered to close the front door.

When he finally wakes on the seventh day, the midday sun is shining through the drapes and illuminating the empty sideboard where Jess used to keep her cacti collection. There’s just white space, now. There’s white space everywhere since Jess had cleared out all her stuff. It’s clean as hell in here, too, evidence of the cleaning service’s pass through while Sam was off attempting murder on small-town family practitioners in Colorado. Fuck. It’s like a pristine, perfect, magazine spread of an unlived-in McMansion dream house.

Sam gets up with a low groan, stumbles upstairs, and surveys himself in the mirror. He looks like crap. He takes a long shower and starts his load of travel laundry before coming back downstairs and emptying every single bit of alcohol in his house down the drain.

He putters around, noting the objects that Jess left, the things that she considered more ‘his’ than ‘hers.’ He’d purchased most of them as a sort of victory trophy at various milestones in his law career, but seeing them now with new eyes, they don’t look all that great. There’s a giant flat screen that he never watches because he’s working all the time. There’s a globe that held liquor inside. The electric massage recliner he only bought because a senior partner had talked it up so much at the office Christmas party, and for some dumb reason Sam had thought it might be a good conversation starter for networking with the guy.

Of course, it all seems stupid now. Two thousand dollars for a fucking conversation starter.

He tries to think about how he’s gonna make it up to Dean, but the one silver lining of his withdrawal is that there’s no holding focus on any one thought for long, so he can’t fixate on it. He cooks some hash browns instead for something to do. He exercises, sort of, half-heartedly and gently—his stomach’s still not so good, but it feels nice emotionally to know that he’s on it. He’s working toward getting his life together again.

More time passes, and his anxiety spikes. He paces around his empty house for hours before finally deciding he can’t handle being cooped up anymore. He’s got two more weeks of vacation time to use up, but there’s nothing to use it on. He’d rather be at work and have something to do. He calls into the office, lets his boss know he’s changing his official return time to tomorrow, and then keeps his head down at his desk while sorting through recent mail and trying to wait out the misery.

~

At the office the next day, Sam struggles to focus on his work, elbows on the desk and fingers rubbing at his temples as he stares unseeing at the documents spread out before him. Maybe he should’ve stayed on vacation. It’s not like he’s being productive anyway. He wants a drink. He  _ really  _ wants a drink, and the whole healthy hydration thing he’s been trying with Gatorade all morning hasn’t been helping much. Still, at least it’s something down his throat.

He blinks at the empty bottle next to him, and then gets up to go refill it from the water cooler in the hall. He reaches out the bottle to hold under the dispenser tap, he realizes his hands are shaking so badly that he can’t even hold it right. A couple of senior litigators striding his way stop and greet him mid-conversation with bright eyes.

“Hey, Sam, you look like shit!” Simmons laughs, giving him an exaggerated once-over. “Whadja do, drive drunk around Death Valley for a year?”

Sam tries to paste on smile, but feels like he’s probably missing it by a mile. “I went to visit my uncle for a week, the one with the tow truck out in the boonies. My brother was there, too,” he says, grimacing. He doesn’t know why he said that. He didn’t mean to say that. “Uh, anyway. Really small town. It was, uh, a long drive through a lot of nothing.”

Simmons laughs harder for some reason. “Well, that explains it. Cut off from civilized society, under the pall of redneck relatives. A full week, jesus. I don’t know how you do it. I know I can’t go more than three days without intelligent conversation or I end up drinking myself to a stupor just to drown out the idiots around me.”

Sam frowns, thinking to himself that Bobby speaks three languages and reads two more. The others guys don’t notice.

Simmons turns back to Maybourne, who he’d been talking to before. “Anyway, where was I going with that before Warner here walked in looking like the ghost of bourbon past?”

“Patent case, David v. Goliath,” Maybourne replies.

“Oh yeah. So opposing counsel’s argument boils down to, ‘but he invented it.’ I’m like, who gives a fuck if he invented it? It prevents battery corrosion by way of chemical coating. That falls under our patent.”

“These guys are like mosquitoes,” Maybourne scoffs. “You squash one and eight more pop up.”

“I know. These small-town, self-representing ‘entrepreneurs’ think they can sell our products without paying our share just because we aren’t producing them.”

“What’s his day job?”

“Just some dumb mechanic. Probably flunked out of high school.”

Keeping his head down, Sam quietly keeps his attention on refilling his bottle as they continue on their way down the hall, but inwardly, it eats at him. Is this what Sam sounds like when he talks about his friends and family? What was it he said to Dean at the bar? Something about Cas’ family being unimpressed by a simple mechanic? The shame washes over him, and he can feel his face heat up.

He quickly finishes with the water dispenser and hurries back into his office, shutting the door behind him.

~

On Friday, he goes into town for a meeting with Jess’ lawyer to discuss asset division. They both need to sign a voluntary Marital Settlement Agreement equally dividing their community property now during the waiting period, or risk hashing it out in court later before a judge.

Sam doesn’t want to fight her on it. He doesn’t want to fight anything. He rubs his temples, still battling the constant sense of impending flu even after thirteen days. The elevator doors open and deposit him on the fourth floor, by a window overlooking a parking lot.

Jess’ lawyer occupies a small, single suite in an older office building not far from the Los Angeles Mall. The cheap carpet is gray; the low-end waiting chairs in the lobby are gray; the desk in his office is mahogany but scratched. The man stands to shake his hand when Sam comes in, head foggy and achy, feeling generally like shit.

Jess remains seated on the far side of the room in a pink sweater he’s never seen before. He sees her and wishes that he had a drink.

“Hey,” Sam says tentatively as he heads for the opposite chair.

“Yeah. Hi,” she says without looking up. She looks tense and unhappy, legs crossed, leaning on an elbow and picking at the scratched desk with her nail.

Last time he’d seen her, she’d been brushing her hair in the mirror in the upstairs bathroom at home. She’d been quiet then, too, and he just didn’t think it was that big of a deal. She was angry. Usually she stormed when she was angry, talking about her feelings more than Dean, John, or Bobby ever had, but he’d thought he had her figured out. He’d thought she’d come around, stick through it at least. She always had before, even when she was pissed about something.

Now she just looks tired and resigned. Thin lines have settled around her mouth and eyes. Her hair is neat and tied back efficiently, not curled anymore—and it occurs to him that she hasn’t curled it for years. Her ring finger is bare. 

The lawyer—Joe something, Sam can’t make himself remember right now—taps a stack of papers on the desk to straighten them before turning to Sam.

“I take it you’ll be representing yourself in the process, or are we waiting on somebody?”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m not contesting anything. We can do this amicably.”

With a skeptical glance at his face and then away again, Jess nods.

“Right. In that case, let’s just keep this as simple as we can,” Joe says, pulling the MSA form from the stack. “The first four items are about children, which we don’t have to worry about in this case. Number five is about spousal support.”

Sam starts to speak just as Joe continues. “That’s fine, whatever you ask—”

“Jessica recognizes that you both have full-time careers and neither sacrificed professional opportunity, and has decided to waive any right to claim spousal support on the condition that you do the same.”

Jessica doesn’t emote. Sam tries to search her eyes but she keeps them averted to the desk, mouth tight, fingernail scratching tiny marks into the cheap soft wood.

“Uh, agreed,” Sam says.

“Number six regards the division of community property and debt. The big item here is the house, which Jessica will cede in its entirety provided you take over the remainder of the debt. She will also give up any claim to compensation for the portion of the mortgage that she has already contributed, as she did live in it during the time of those payments.”

Sam blinks, surprised. “You don’t want the house?”

With a long-suffering sigh, Jess finally makes tired eye contact. “No, Sam.  _ You  _ wanted the house. It was always you. I said it was too big when we looked at it, but you overrode me and pushed through anyway. Remember?”

Sam stares at the cheap carpet as his world view rearranges itself.

“I thought… ok.”

She had said that. She had said that a lot, over a week-long series of arguments, but in the end she hadn’t stopped him when he’d signed. She’d glared, but she’d signed too. He’d just figured it was because he won the argument. They were both competitive that way, right? Weren’t they? It was banter. Banter was fun.

“The other communal assets are the furniture and cars, which I understand are already divided between you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam agrees numbly.

“Here is the Property Order Attachment specifying the same.” Sam takes it and looks it over on autopilot, lawyer’s eyes skimming through the lingo.

“Fine.”

“Then items seven through ten are a stipulation that you won’t contest the agreement, and confirmation that you have served the last Declaration of Disclosure, won’t require another Declaration of Disclosure, and a note about filing fees. Sign here?” He hands the form to Sam, who signs. “And Jessica?” Jess signs as well. “Very good. This form will be incorporated into the decree of dissolution of marriage. Thanks for coming by, Sam.”

Sam shakes the other lawyer’s hand out of habit, and then awkwardly stands and hovers for a second before moving to the door. Jess is getting up too, and he doesn’t know whether to rush out ahead of her or to pace himself normally by her side and risk a misunderstanding. She moves past him to open the door first and he defaults into his usual place next to her side.

As they walk through the building’s halls and wait for the elevator down to the lobby, there’s an awkward silence. Sam finally breaks it.

“I’m sorry about pushing you on the house.”

Jess shrugs without warmth or anger. It hurts worse in a way, because she used to fight him when she got mad. This indifference is worse than exasperation would’ve been. Although in retrospect, maybe he should’ve been paying more attention to the exasperation.

Sam awkwardly says, “I know this is way after-the-fact and too late now, but I recognize now that I’ve been—that I  _ was  _ a shit husband, not really listening to what you had to say. I’ve, um. I’ve quit drinking, for what it’s worth.”

Jess sighs and finally replies. “The alcohol wasn’t the issue, it was a symptom. You had a stressful job and I understood that. I could live with that. But the house thing, that wasn’t a one-time deal. You did that constantly, thought you knew better and would override me on things. That’s not respecting someone as a partner, Sam.” She looks at him, meeting his eyes at last, and her gaze is firm but kind of sad.

“When else did I do that?” Sam asks. As soon as it’s out of his mouth, he regrets it, knowing it’s just going to end in both of them upset.

Sure enough, Jess gets a kind of angry, glossy wetness to her eyes.

“Well, how about the dog?”

He knows immediately what she’s referring to. There’d been a dog Sam brought back despite Jess not liking dogs. He’d insisted she would feel different about this one, but she hadn’t ever come round to it. On the contrary, she’d resented having to take care of it while he was too busy, and eventually they’d had to re-home it with one of her friends. Jess had talked at length about the guilt she felt over rejecting the lonely thing despite having said from the beginning that she didn’t want it.

“Or how about you unilaterally throwing out all our old VHS? Or hell, how about my birthday?”

“I thought we’d worked through that.”

“ _ You _ worked through that. Literally.”

“I had an important meeting! I told you about it ahead of time. You said you understood.”

“It was a  _ networking event _ , Sam! Not a work meeting. Not a case. Not an angry judge with a looming deadline. It was cocktails with the partners to celebrate some old bastard’s retirement, and you didn’t even know him. Junior associates weren’t even expected to go.”

“But it was—” He realizes what he’s about to say and cuts himself off in time. It may have been optional and social rather than work-related, but these opportunities were how people made professional connections that would help them down the line. Sam had used the party to introduce himself to the senior partner next in line for the position of CEO. Sam’s argument had been that it was for her benefit as well if his networking at these events led to promotions and salary increases down the line, but making that call on her behalf is sort of her point.

“I’m… I’m sorry I missed your birthday,” he says instead.

Jess deflates, all the anger going out of her with a sigh and leaving nothing but resignation.

“It wasn’t about my birthday. It was never about my birthday. It was about you deciding on your own what was important for us, as a couple. It was about you constantly dismissing my arguments, or not even consulting me every time you made a decision you thought was best.”

The elevator arrives and she steps into it. He stands in place, heart hurting, even though he’s just going to have to wait and take the next one down to the same parking lot.

“You’d think you’d know better than most what it’s like,” she says after a second of sorrowful consideration. “Since your dad tried to stop you from going to college because the salesman job was supposed to be more lucrative.”

Sam stares at her in misery at the elevator doors close, and then she’s gone.

~

It’s Friday night, and everyone in the office is out at Glenn’s Tavern, drinking cocktails and sharing their victories and gripes.

Meanwhile, Sam is at home in his big empty house, staring at other people’s Facebook pages and stewing in his own regrets.

He sits in the dark with his laptop on the bed, idly looking up anything he can find about Dean’s new life online. From what he can tell, Dean Winchester dropped off the map after an arrest for vandalism and grave desecration eight years ago. But as of five years ago, Dean Novak starts making his debut in the background of a lot of strangers’ Facebook photos. They’re all fun little backyard get-togethers at first, and Dean looks genuinely happy in every one. After that, he starts to appear in local news articles as well—one about running in a marathon for cancer research and finishing fourth; another about the Novaks accepting a big donation from a Bela Talbot and husband for research into underfunded rare medical conditions (and yep, it is sure clear now what he and Cas were doing with all those ‘patient support groups.’ Sam should be shot for his criminal degree of obliviousness).

There’s a longer piece in which Dean is credited for saving a kid from a burning car wreck after he and Cas ‘just happened’ to be driving by. An educated guess tells Sam that was probably hunt-related, and the kid might be some kind of supernatural creature. There’s also a vacation album and a honeymoon album that Cas has put up online. For the first trip, it looks like they went to a B&B in Vermont in the winter. Photos show them skiing and building snowmen, or cuddled up together over steaming coffee. The second is a week-long road trip through beaches and resorts in Mexico, culminating in a climb to the top of one of those big Mayan pyramids. Cas and Dean’s selfie at the top looks triumphant, their arms raised, Dean’s mouth open in a giddy shout. They look tan, fit and well-rested.

Sam hasn’t had a vacation since grad school, not counting the failed trip to see Bobby, and the only exercise he’s been getting in the last five years is on a treadmill at home.

His fingernails drift to his mouth again, and he puts them down again with a thump.

Moving on to Yelp and Google, he finds the good news is not just limited to social stuff. There’s a bunch of positive reviews of Dean’s garage business, and some blog by what he’s guessing is a vampire with a lot of vague but heartfelt talk about how “these men at Grand Lake clinic saved my life.”

Dean has achieved a phenomenal amount in just a few short years, so much more than Sam had given him credit for when he called him “just a mechanic.” Dean has worked hard to integrate into his community. He’s actively helping people in very real, measurable ways. He’s living a full life with friends and travel and all sorts of great experiences. And all of Sam’s arrogance and baseless assumptions were worth dick.

It tortures him to know that he almost ended all of this. If his attack on Cas had been a little better planned, or if Dean had taken the bait he’d set with his text that night, he could’ve destroyed everything—Dean and his hard-won happiness; the life of a good man who’d seen victims where Sam and his predecessors had only seen monsters; a whole community of families depending on that clinic to live.

And he just keeps thinking about what Bobby told him—about how Dad had actually _known_ the truth, had gone into it eyes-open with the full story about the werewolf bite and the meds, and had tried to kill Dean anyway. Sam can’t shake the stomach-churning feeling that gives him.

He can’t put it off anymore. Finally, he types “John Winchester murder conviction” into the search bar and presses ‘enter.’

The results that come up are about as bad as he expected.

Dad is indeed in prison, and there was a fairly well-publicized trial before that. According to the Granby Gazette, he’d made some murder threats against an unidentified person in the community (presumably Dean) and the sheriff’s office had already been on extra patrol for him. The community had been warned to stay in their houses while the area was searched.

At 10:00pm, a call had come into 911 from a woman living on the property neighboring that of the threatened person, frantic and talking about an active shooter. The call cut out and police were sent. Crime scene investigators pieced together the rest. Two local families had been having dinner together at home, and for reasons unknown, the three men of the group—two fathers and an uncle—went outside into the wooded back of the property, coming across the shooter by coincidence as he crept toward his intended target’s house. John Winchester had opened fire on them (because, Sam guesses, John had identified them by their reflective eyes), killing two of them instantly, and leaving the other bleeding to crawl some distance away. John had caught up and shot him again execution style.

Hearing the gunshots, one of the women ran out into the woods after her husband and was also shot there. The other locked all the doors and hid the children under the beds after calling 911. Her body was found in the living room near the kicked-in front door. The kids’ bodies were found still huddled together under a bed. All were shot with the same weapon.

With police sirens already in hearing range, the killer then left the house towards the neighboring property, where he was met halfway by two local men who’d heard the shots. The men stalled him until Grand County Sheriff Mills pulled up and ordered him to drop his weapon. He instead raised the weapon in a threatening manner, and Sheriff Mills dropped him with a bullet to the lung. First aid was administered and the suspect was transferred to police custody and then later to FBI custody in the ICU, before finally being remanded to the county jail.

The article goes on after that to talk about the families that were killed, how beloved they were in the community and how the kids had been in little league and one of the parents was active in the PTA. Knowing they were probably Dean’s closest neighbors, Sam feels an upswell of grief. He thinks about the two hundred plus people Cas and his buddies have given sanctuary and a new life to out there—Dean included, who would have died by his own hand alone in the mountains without Cas’ intervention—and conversely, how little Sam has done for anyone in the last ten years. Sam hasn’t done shit for anybody but himself in a long, long time.

Increasingly depressed, he gets up and heads into the kitchen, opening and searching the cupboards one by one. He’s halfway through the bottom drawers of the refrigerator before the realization hits.

He’s looking for booze on autopilot. 

Disgusted with himself, he slinks upstairs and gets back online. After staring sadly through the screen for a bit, he gives up and goes back down to the fridge again for a block of cheese. He eats a bunch of that before grimacing.

“If I go the substitution route every time I want a drink, I’ll be 600 lbs by May,” he mutters to himself, putting the cheese back in the fridge.

Instead, he does a few sets of push-ups and jogs for a while on the treadmill. Pleasantly sore and feeling a little better, he returns to the computer.

It turns out John’s plea deal for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty led to the case closure of not just the seven shifter murders, but an additional nine “serial killings” in various states over the years where he’d left DNA or fingerprints behind. Out of curiosity, Sam starts looking up the names of John’s earlier confirmed victims and tries to see if he can work out what type of monster each one was. It isn’t terribly hard once he gets to cross-referencing dates and places with unusual phenomena in the news, weird weather patterns, dead cattle, missing persons, etc.

As he goes through each one—djinn, shapeshifter, siren, rugaru, ghoul—he’s surprised at how much he remembers, and realizes that he’s actually still good at this, possibly as good as he used to be at spotting and identifying potential cases. Maybe better, given how much his legal experience has taught him about alternative sources of information and how to research public records most efficiently.

Maybe he should’ve stayed in the hunting business. He could’ve worked with Dean alone, and put his talents to better use. John was a horrible father and a merciless piece of shit when it came to non-humans, but at least he’d done some good in the world, saving hundreds of lives in his time. Dean was better by far, taking his dad’s crusade and turning it into something honestly fucking honorable. Sam, by contrast, hasn’t done jack shit to save anyone lately, despite having the knowledge and training it would take to do so. Regret and longing for whiskey circling his head, he turns off the computer and goes to sleep.

~

Back at the office full time, it slowly becomes impossible to deny that he really, truly, sincerely hates this job.

He goes through the motions each day, and he’s good at this, too, he realizes—not the internal politics and the money-grubbing stuff, but the research, the arguments, and the cut-throat decision-making in taking down opponents and in-company rivals. It’s weird, but it occurs to him that, in a way, the skills he and Dean were encouraged to acquire in childhood actually helped prepare him for this. All of the practice impersonating authority figures for con-jobs, constant drills until he could pull the trigger without hesitation, investigations and research, looking for tells when someone’s lying—all of it transfers to a career in corporate law.

If he ever sees Dad again, he should mention this. That’d be a barrel of laughs.

Voices drift in from around the water cooler in the hall, barely audible where Sam currently sits at his desktop with hardcopy documentation all over the desk next to him.

“You want to hit Happy Hour after the meeting with Fredrickson?” Maybourne is asking.

“Sure,” comes Simmons’ drawl. “I owe you a scotch for covering me last time.”

“Ugh, I could really go for some scotch right now. The case these bozos brought me!”

Grumpily, Sam gets up and closes his office door. There’s probably a good reason why beheading his coworkers and bosses would be wrong, but it’s a little hard to remember right now. He can  _ taste  _ the scotch in his mouth, and he hasn’t even had any for almost three weeks. It’s like his whole body just shuts down and goes into salivation mode, like Pavlov’s dogs.

Forcing the thirst down, he reaches for the trial brief he’s been working on, a defense against a class action lawsuit representing 8,000 neighborhood residents. Sam’s representing the corporation being sued. They want legal costs and the cessation of lead emissions from his client’s factory, which is—Sam rechecks the numbers and sighs—way over the legal limit, so now they have the EPA to deal with on top of the civil case.

He makes a phone call to the corporation’s in-house counsel and advises the client to settle, but the in-house counsel refuses—says they’ve been running this way for decades and backing down might be taken as admission of guilt in future personal injury cases. And there are definitely a big number of personal injury cases coming down the pike in the next fifteen years or so.

The in-house counsel instead insists they fight it, so Sam’s scraped together some old documents to form a  _ barely _ credible argument that the client’s site is actually not one, but two separate factories that just happen to be close together. Each factory individually meets National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, so technically claims that either one emitted unsafe levels of lead are false.

It’s a bullshit argument. It’s all complete bullshit, and Sam knows it, and the judge will know it too, and the shittiest part is that it might even work anyway if the trial goes forward before a jury. Either way, the neighborhood residents are still all going to get lead poisoning, and that’s now also Sam’s fault.

He hates himself.

He hates who he’s become.

All he wants to do is drink until he’s passed out and doesn’t have to remember who he is anymore.

Unable to stay seated any longer, he gets up and leaves notice that he’s going out for lunch. He needs to see something other than the same suffocating walls. He needs to breathe and move.

He heads for the park at a fast walk, impatient and already sweating through his button-up in the hot August sun. Angrily, he rips off his tie and unfastens the top three buttons, wishing to hell he wasn’t such an asshat so he could fucking trust himself to have one fucking beer on a hot day when he’s feeling like shit. He wishes he could go home to his wife and maybe take her out on a date. Fuck! He wishes he could fucking  _ jog  _ again, like he used to! Like he did every morning before he gave it up so he could work twelve hours a day, eighty hours a week, so goddamn pleased to have gotten hired at the biggest law firm in L.A. He was fucking  _ eager  _ to do it!

Sam has to stop running to beat his head against a tree for a little bit, and then sinks down on his haunches. He lets himself breathe, feeling profoundly sorry for himself for just a second, before viciously wiping at his misty eyes and pulling himself back together. People passing by eyeball him weirdly, but he’s just been jogging in the dead heat of August in a pair of patent leather Oxfords and slacks, so there ya go.

Maybe if he’d never given up hunting, things wouldn’t have gone so badly. He’d liked the doing the research, and problem-solving while on a case. The lore had always been interesting, even then. And the adrenaline rush when he’d put those conclusions to the test? The satisfaction afterward? He’d made a fucking  _ difference  _ then, in people’s lives.

Setting his jaw decisively, he circles around and heads back in the direction of the office with the intention of grabbing his laptop and heading home for the afternoon. He’s wasted enough years chasing normalcy and recognition as it is.

He’s going to search himself a case.

~

Rushing past Maybourne in his sweat-damp shirt, he slows but doesn’t stop moving toward his office. “Hey, listen, I’m taking off a few extra days for the weekend after all. I’ll be back on Tuesday.”

Maybourne turns, confused. “Didn’t you just take a vacation?”

“Came back early,” Sam says, slightly out of breath and stuffing his laptop and only the most time-sensitive case files into his bag. “My cases for the month are still covered; it won’t be a problem.”

“You’re going to scuttle your chances at promotion, you know that,” Maybourne says with what almost looks like concern.

“Yeah, no, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I gotta go.”

~

Sam collapses on the cheap motel bed in the room he paid cash for, physically exhausted, with bruises the shape of broken wall shelving all over his back, covered in blood and feeling absolutely fucking fantastic.

His non-descript Walmart duffle sits open on the floor next to the wall, complete with salt canisters, weapons, chalk, machete, lighters, and duct tape. The only clothes he’s brought are a cheap pair of disposable jeans, a couple flannels, and underwear. His new fake ID sits on the nightstand next to the silver knife, which has been wiped clean but needs disinfecting before he puts it in his bag.

He’s elated. Ecstatic. Practically  _ vibrating _ with the profound rediscovery of his true calling in life! God, the mother and kid he rescued—! The blood on his shirt, the adrenaline still pumping through his veins! He needs to share the euphoria. He has to tell someone. It’s too much to keep in!

Grinning ear to ear, he dials Bobby’s number and bounces his leg while the phone takes forever to ring.

“Bobby!” he bursts out as soon as it’s picked up. “Guess what I just did.”

“Oh, Sam,” Bobby audibly deflates. “I don’t think Dean and Cas are ready for—”

“No, I know, I—” Sam’s brimming joy dims just a little, but not all the way. “I know that. I mean, I expected that. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

There’s a pause. “It ain’t?”

“I just took down a pair of vetalas. They were picking off the homeless south of Boise. I saved this mother and kid they’d been feeding from. Did the whole thing myself, solo. They  _ thanked  _ me.”

“Well, good for you.”

“I think I really made a difference out there. And I can do it again.”

“I hope you ain’t taking up hunting again while you’re still on the booze.”

Sam sits up on the bed with a frown, sincere and insistent. “I’m not. Really, honestly, I haven’t had a drink since you picked me up in the truck.”

Bobby’s voice is warmer this time. “You mean that, boy?”

“Yeah. I swear it, Bobby.”

“That’s good. That’s real good. I know that ain’t easy. From personal experience, I know that.”

“It’s really not,” Sam says with a broken laugh.

“I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure you were gonna make it back to California, leaving the way you did.”

“I had to stop. Four hours, that’s all I managed.” Pausing, he adds somberly, “It’s been difficult. Really difficult. I want it all the time.”

“I know you do. You look into AA?”

“Yeah, I’ve been all over their website, read the books. Rehab websites and psych advice, too. I, um, I don’t think the meetings are for me.”

“I know it makes me a damn hypocrite, but I’m glad you’re sticking with it. The meetings might help, but I ain’t one to bully you into cryin’ on a stranger’s shoulder. For what it’s worth, you can always call me if you need to unload or anything.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“Hell, don’t thank me. You’re the one with all the work to do.”

“Yeah. About that.” Sam takes a breath. “I wanted to ask you if you could send me any leads you get on hunts. I want to take this up again, maybe not full time, but—”

Bobby interrupts, indignant now. “Sam, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in the business of  _ helping  _ these people now—”

“No, I know, I know! That’s what I mean! I want to do that. Please, I want to, I  _ need _ to help. Give me info. Brochures. Whatever! I’ll send ‘em your way as much as I can. It’s not killing things I’m after, it’s—I just have nothing left, Bobby.”

The other side of the phone goes suspiciously quiet. Sam presses on, desperate to be understood.

“I have nothing left. I have my job, but that’s—that’s just a way to make money now, and I don’t even—I don’t have friends. I don’t even have work friends. I had drinking buddies I worked with, and now I can’t even be around them without tearing myself apart inside wanting a drink. I wasn’t open with them anyway. And Jess, Jess is gone. Forever. I wasn’t open with her. I hate my workplace. I hate my job. I hate my big empty house, which doesn’t even mean anything—”

“Alright, I get ya,” Bobby murmurs.

“I need  _ something.  _ I need  _ just one thing  _ I can feel good about!  _ One thing  _ I can do where I feel like I’m making a difference!”

“Alright.”

“And this, this behavioral health clinic I looked into, they were talking about finding new hobbies and staying busy, exercising, volunteer work—”

“Alright.”

“They kept saying, don’t go back to old addiction-adjacent relationships, build new relationships, find a worthy cause to support and feel good about the contributions you’re making—”

“I get it, Sam.”

“And you just, you just said I could call you, so I thought—”

“You can call me, Sam. Jesus.” Bobby sighs heavily, voice muffled by a hand and then comes back clear again. “You can call me. Hell, I didn’t realize I was signing up to be a sponsor or whatever, though. You know I’m not off the wagon myself, right? Hell.”

“You understand, though,” Sam says in a small voice. “You’ve always steered me right, read me better than I read myself, and I’m sorry I cut you out of my life. I was worse off for it.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a moment, and when Bobby speaks, he sounds touched and kind of quiet himself. “Well, hell, Sam.” There’s another silence, and Sam fidgets anxiously, knowing Bobby’s reluctant to let him in on this.

“Please, Bobby. I need to feel like I’m really doing something worthwhile. I  _ need  _ it. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.”

Bobby sighs again, hard. After a moment of suspense, he finally says, “Let me talk to the others. See what I can do.”


	7. Letters From Home

Back at the office, Sam chews his pen cap in frustration, a half-finished trial memorandum abandoned next to his computer. The news headlines he’s browsing have held a few good leads, but he still hasn’t decided what to do as far as the next hunt.

Three days have passed without word from Bobby on whether he’ll be allowed to work with the organization. His case papers lie neglected in their folders, his billable hours are abysmal for the month, but he doesn’t give a fuck anymore, really. Maybe he can find a ghost case or something simple like that so he can still save people with a salt-and-burn, even if the Grand Lake contingent don’t agree to take him on.

He’d thought he might have an answer sooner than this, and the wait is interminable.

The urge to drink is getting ridiculously strong, and more than once in the last couple of days, he’s found himself standing outside a 7-11, inwardly debating whether a beer would even count as alcohol given that what he really wants is bourbon. The one thing that keeps him going is telling himself,  _ you told Bobby you wouldn’t. You told him you were sober and you could handle the hunts. You want the hunts. _

So he looks and looks through the online paranormal sites and the usual magazines and newspapers, but it’s difficult to focus and it all just seems so pointless. Finally, he gives up, telling the receptionist that he’ll be out to lunch, and heads down to the parking garage to find his car.

When Bobby finally calls back, Sam is just getting his keys out, halfway through the parking garage. He fumbles the phone in his haste to answer.

“Bobby! What’d they say? Can I help? Am I in?”

There’s a long reluctant sigh before Bobby answers. “Sam…”

Sam’s stomach drops, and he slows to a stop mid-parking lot without noticing. “They don’t want me involved.”

“Cas vetoed the idea. Said you couldn’t be trusted, and the other docs supported him. I’m sorry.”

It’s not that he’s devastated, and he gets it, he really does. It’s just that he’d thought maybe, maybe Dean would understand that he hadn’t meant it. That he wanted to make things right. He’d thought maybe Dean would let him try.

He’s scared to ask, but he needs to know. “What—What did Dean say? Did Dean agree?”

“Sam, you can’t—”

_ Oh.  _ “Dean said I couldn’t be trusted, too.” His head feels strangely light. He never thought—Dean had always had his back, and he knew this was coming, but still he’d thought—but Sam had done the same to him years before, and people change, people learn not to let themselves get burnt anymore—

“Dean doesn’t know,” Bobby interrupts his spiraling, sounding irritated. He didn’t want to bring this up, Sam realizes. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell him. Cas didn’t want to, either, though for different reasons, I’ll admit—”

“Will you ask him?”

“It won’t make any difference—”

“Please, Bobby, will you ask him? I just gotta know.”

Silence, and another sigh. “He’s… He ain’t forgiven you yet for trying to kill Cas, and I don’t want either of you to say something you don’t mean.”

Sam processes that, then says in a quiet voice, “You think he doesn’t trust me either.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.”

It takes a few tries before he can get his voice working again. “It’s okay. I have it coming. I know.”

“I’ll ask him, but I just don’t want you to expect—”

“No, I—I get it. And I haven’t been, that is, I don’t expect him to forgive me. Or talk to me. Or even wanna see me. I just—” He swallows. “I just thought I might be allowed to help.”

After an awkward silence, Bobby says sheepishly, “For what it’s worth, I think you’d be an asset, with your hunting background and the legal connections. I pulled for you at the meeting.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

There’s another long pause, and then Bobby lets out an exasperated huff of air. “And hell, there's nothing says that you can't help people outside of our organization, either. It’s not like you ain’t gonna keep hunting on your own. You run across a freshly-turned human or a reluctant killer, you know where to send ‘em.”

“I only know the town,” Sam mutters. “I wouldn’t know who to send them to.”

“You’ve got Cas’ office address.”

“He’s not going to want me giving that out.”

“Well, use my house then.”

“Someone in Grand Lake’s still going to notice I’m sending people.”

“Who gives a damn if they notice? Who’s going to stop you? There’s not a secret monster-saving hit squad enforcing everyone’s total secrecy, Sam!”

“I don’t have permission!”

“Permission?!” Bobby swears, the volume getting dimmer as he holds the phone away from his mouth and then loud again when he puts it back. “Since when have you ever needed permission? Whatever happened to the Sam who wouldn’t take no for an answer when he got it in his head to do something? I don’t recall you waiting for permission when you went and earned yourself a full-ride scholarship to Stanford!”

“Yeah, and look where that got me!”

“It got you a couple of degrees and a license to practice law, you dumbass!” Bobby says with vehemence. “It got you a house in frickin’ Sierra Madre and a high-profile job and a beautiful wife! Granted, that last part maybe didn’t work out, but are you really gonna blame that on being a normal goddamn independent adult? If you’d kept hunting like your old man wanted, you’d’a never had a relationship longer than three months!”

“But I  _ would’ve _ still had a relationship with my brother!”

“Christ!” Bobby runs through a second string of profanity before coming back, sounding really disdainful and pissed now. “You don’t have a relationship with your brother because you cut him out, changed your number, and then tried to murder his husband like a goddamn jackass! Not ‘cause you went to goddamn college!” There’s a slam of something like a drawer kicking shut.

Sam covers his eyes with his free hand in grief, unable to even speak.

“Listen, I know you’re in a rough place right now. I know you keep clinging to the idea that if you just fix this or just do that, maybe you can undo the shit that’s gone down. But you need to get it though your head that whatever you’re doing to turn your life around, you’re not doing it for Dean. You’re not doing it for me or Jess or hunting or any of that either. You’re doing it for yourself, and that’s all you  _ should  _ be doing it for.”

Sam feels tears leaking out of his eyes and rubs angrily at them, breath ragged but as silent as he can make it, not wanting Bobby to hear.

“You’ve got to get your life in order because you  _ want _ your life in order, not because you think doing it will help you do penance or fix your relationships or whatever. You used to be the one of us who was good at all this internal-reflection-inner-drive shit. You telling me you lost the ability to do that?”

“No,” Sam says hoarsely. “No, I can do that.”

“So how about you quit waiting on permission or acceptance before you do something about it, and just go on and make what you want outta your life.”

Sam tries to sound reassured. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You wanna save folk? Save some folk.”

“Yeah, of course. You’re right, Bobby, totally. Thanks.”

“I mean it. Can you handle that?”

“Yep, no problem. Oh, uh, my ride’s here. Gotta go, bye,” he lies, and hangs up and pinches the bridge of his nose between his eyes. Standing motionless by himself between rows of cars, he stares at his own car in the orange lights of the covered parking garage.

That was that, then.

That was all there was to it. He’d wanted an answer, and he got one. Bobby was right. He didn’t need permission to keep hunting. He didn’t need, y’know, allies or colleagues or a team or… or…

He covers his mouth with the palm of one hand and takes in a long shaky breath. Shit.

He’d really let himself hope. He’d really let himself stupidly think that getting sober would fix things, that he could blame the shit he pulled on Cas and Dean on the alcohol and that throwing off the alcohol would be taking care of that problem. But Bobby's right—has been right all along. The alcohol's only a symptom and the real problem has been Sam himself.

Sam is a selfish prick. Sam is all big talk and ambition without follow-through. He didn't have Dean's back, didn't have Jess' back, and never even gave Cas a chance. Even this thing he’s got now with Bobby, his last remaining friend in the world, is decidedly one-sided. Sam just takes and takes from him, and doesn’t provide anything in return. Sam's no good to anybody.

He gets in his car on autopilot like he was planning, but somehow instead of driving to a take-out place for lunch, he ends up at the liquor store he used to frequent and puts the car in park without thinking about it.

Like a mindless automaton, he goes in and picks up a bottle of bourbon and takes it over to the counter.

The clerk at the counter rings him up and says, “$33 with tax.”

Sam doesn’t move, reply, or look up at him; he just stands frozen, staring at the bottle on the counter in front of him.

The guy clears his throat and says again, “$33, man.”

He doesn’t respond. He feels like something big is building up inside and crashing through him. He doesn’t think he  _ can  _ respond. He barely thinks he can  _ move.  _ Because if he  _ moves,  _ he’s going to take that bottle with him, and then Bobby will be disappointed in him, and he already won’t get to help with the organization’s rescue hunts so it doesn’t matter anyway, but he’ll know he’s like his father and Dean will never speak to him—not that he’s going to speak to him if he doesn’t—

“…You ok, man?”

–and it’s like Bobby said, he has to do this for himself, not for Dean or for anyone else’s approval but the thing is, he just can’t. Sam’s not worth doing it for and he just doesn’t have that kind of stamina in him anymore, not all alone—

“Because, uh, I don’t wanna pry or anything, but you kinda got that look of someone who doesn’t actually wanna buy the bottle.”

Sam does look up finally, belatedly incredulous at the remark. He’s not sure it’s possible to want anything more than he wants that bottle right now.

The clerk shifts uncomfortably.

“I mean, if you’re on the fence or something… maybe you wanna call someone, take a walk or something and think about it, make up your mind?”

Sam blinks and it crashes over him. This guy knows. This guy can just look at him and  _ tell.  _ Fuck, Sam really is a complete mess.

“No, I, I’m ok. You’re right. I don’t need the bourbon. Thanks.” He tries to smile, to look calm, but by the dude’s face it must look more like a grimace.

He nods at the guy again and books it out of there back into his car as fast as he can.

Slamming the door shut, he bends his head over the wheel and tries to fix his face, to make it look like he has it together. He can hear his dad’s voice, Dean’s, his boss’s in his head.  _ For fuck’s sake, Sam, pull yourself together! _

The clerk’s comment about calling someone comes back to him and he pulls out his phone. He stares at it, but he can’t call Bobby. He just hung up with Bobby, and he can’t call now or it will look like he’s begging. Like he’s trying to be manipulative or to guilt-trip him into letting Sam on the team. Sam hasn’t been around, hasn’t earned the right to rely on Bobby emotionally; he can’t even call Dean, who’s in more of a position of obligation than Bobby, since at least Dean’s still blood, even if Sam cut him off for eleven years and left him to die alone by killing himself for werewolfism on some freezing mountain in the Rockies and tried to murder his husband and almost ended up murdering Dean himself in cold blood.

He can’t even call Dad, who’s in prison, and Sam still hasn’t bothered to check on him.

He’s dirt. He’s worse than dirt, he’s a shitty brother and a shitty son, a shitty pseudo-nephew or whatever Bobby thinks of him as, or used to think of him as, and a shitty husband, or ex-husband now, a shitty son-in-law, and a shitty person in general.

He turns around and stares back behind him in the direction of the liquor store again through the rear window, fidgeting with his hands, running them through his hair and wringing them together before tapping his fingers on the wheel again. He’s got to start the car. That’s it. He’s got to start the car and go back to the office and wait this out—no, no, he can’t go back to the office yet, his face will draw attention. He wipes his forehead and isn’t surprised to find sweat. He tries to school his features again. He must look like a crazy person. Like a homeless drug addict, except he’s still in his work clothes, a nice business suit, an immaculate well-conditioned Prius, and for some reason this strikes him as funny, because he is an addict. He’s an addict in every sense of the word, and he is not okay, business suit or otherwise.

He opens the car door again without thinking, and slides his legs out to rest on the pavement outside but doesn’t get up from the driver’s seat. The car door alarm beeps at him impatiently as he sits there, frozen in indecision, tapping his phone against his leg, frowning into the gum-smeared cement of the empty parking space next to him.

He lifts his phone again. He opens up the address book, scrolls down to Bobby Singer, and looks at the number for a while.

Can he call Bobby?

No. No, it’s out of the question.

Except he can’t drive away. He can’t go forward, and he can’t go backward. And Bobby had said he could call. All the pamphlets and websites are firm on this—he has to call someone at a time like this.

But he can’t.

In the midst of this quiet internal meltdown, while he’s still staring at the number, trying and failing to decide either way, the phone buzzes.

He has an incoming text from Bobby.

Sam opens the message.

_ Forgot to mention this earlier, but I'm proud of you for getting off the drink. You're doing great, kid, and don't you think otherwise. You're better than me and your old man. _

Smiling through sudden tears, one or two of which break over his lashes, Sam starts to type back:

_ If you want to kick the habit with me, I'm all for the buddy system _ —

—but then he stops. No. He's sitting in front of a liquor store right this second, and the hubris is what got him into this mess in the first place.

He erases the message and writes a different one instead:

_ Thanks Uncle Bobby, I needed to hear that. Damn good timing as always. _

Pressing send, he puts the phone back into sleep mode and looks up at blue afternoon sky, sniffling and blinking back the wetness in his eyes.

He's ok, he thinks.

He pulls his legs back into the car and shuts the door before starting it up for the drive back into the office.

He’s making progress.

Two steps forward and one step back, but he’s doing ok.

~

Four days later, he’s at the office, going through a pile of mail on his desk, when he comes across an unmarked manila envelope with about fifty brochures advertising Grand Lake, Colorado’s special patient support group and alternative medicine clinic for patients with ‘under-researched medical conditions.’

Sam grins and his eyes get a bit damp. Other than the brochures, there’s only a single post-it note in Bobby's handwriting, which just says,  _ You better appreciate your brother, ya idjit. _

~

Sam finds a vampire den in a warehouse, and spends the weekend stalking and then ambushing the sire.

The clan is still small, only a single established killer with a sadistic streak and a list of victims miles long, plus three newly-turned teens. They’re clearly just kids, a trio of rebellious gothic teens that got in over their heads, and they scream bloody murder when Sam pops up out of nowhere and beheads their asshole leader.

Machete still dripping, he herds them back into the corner before they can scatter on him. They’re hissing and screeching with fangs bared, obviously scared stiff.

Sam holds up his free hand in a ‘wait’ motion and stays where he is, several feet away.

“No no no no, I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t want to hurt you! Just, listen to me for a minute.”

“Oh, right, like you didn’t want to hurt Gerry?!” One of them laughs, fear making his voice crack. “C’mon, you can’t expect us to believe that!”

“Look, you’re, you’re Ethan, right?” Sam says with a smile that he hopes radiates reassurance and calm. His machete is still upraised, but he’s trying not to draw attention to it. “And Julie? And Camila? Your parents are worried about you.”

“So what? They never worried before,” says the dark-haired girl.

“We can’t go back,” says the other. “We can’t—I can’t stop trying to—”

“He didn’t tell us it would be like this.”

“I know.” Sam nods empathetically. “I know you’re vampires now.”

Julie breaks into hysterical tearful laughter.

“It’s… It’s not the end of the world,” he says, trying to imagine how Cas and his doctor friends probably put it. He is so bad at this. “It’s like a disease. And you can be treated.”

“We’re supposed to trust you after what you did to Gerry? You just  _ beheaded  _ that guy!” Ethan challenges, scared and defensive.

“Yes, yes, I did, but Gerry was a serial killer who hunted people for sport. I don’t think you guys are like him.” Sam gestures at the corpse with the machete, smiles again, and then winces.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody!” Julie sobs.

“See? There you go!” he encourages. “You don’t want to hurt anybody. Gerry tricked you, and changed you to be like him. I get it. I do.”

Camila steps back further into the corner, dragging the weeping Julie with her as Sam takes a step forward. “Just stay back.”

She bares her new teeth, a hundred crowded needle-fangs. Ethan does the same.

“Okay,” he says, hands still outstretched in truce. Slowly, so as not to spook them more, he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a couple of brochures. “Okay. I’m leaving. But I’m leaving these here, alright? Just, have a look at them after I’m gone. If you want to get treatment, they’ll tell you where to go.”

He sets them on a grime-covered desk with broken plastic laminate top, carefully backs away toward the door, and then pauses at the threshold.

“You should know, this isn’t something you can control on your own. If you put it off too long, you might end up like Gerry.”

“Go away!”

“Okay. Just promise me you’ll call. You don’t have to go there if you don’t trust me, that’s fine, but at least call the numbers on the brochure. Talk to somebody.”

They hiss in response—well, two of the three—and he figures that’s all he can expect. He pushes open the door and leaves without putting his back to them all the way until he’s back to his car.

With a silent prayer that he hasn’t totally fucked this up, he drives away, leaving them be.

~

A week later, Sam gets a generic envelope in the mail at his office with no return address, the handwriting recognizably Dean’s.

Curious, he opens it up and finds only a single page of memo paper inside, also in Dean’s handwriting—a ballpoint scrawl, not addressed or signed.

_ Thought you’d like to know your newbies arrived safely. _

It’s curt, probably even angry, but his throat is suddenly tight with emotion. All at once he misses his brother with an intensity he hasn’t known in years. He remembers being in college those first days apart, staring up at a dark ceiling with creaky noises and neighbors murmuring everywhere, and wondering what he’d just gotten himself into. He remembers what it was like to not know a single person around him, having just burned all bridges with the only family he had.

He remembers Dean ruffling his hair and gruffly calling him a nerd to patch things up after they’d had yet another fight as kids.

It isn’t much, but his shoulders seem a little less heavy somehow. Someday he might even be able to breathe again.

The next hunt he pursues is a rugaru the following weekend. This guy he really feels sorry for; he always has felt terrible killing rugarus. The dude has already killed and eaten several pets by the time Sam gets there—possibly also one human, but his memory is foggy—and to say he’s an emotional mess would be a wild understatement. On the bright side, he’s way past the stage of denial and is freaked the hell out about the changes happening to his body and his control. He immediately believes everything Sam says about his condition and clings to Sam’s lifeline as soon as it’s offered.

“You can cure me? You can fix this?” the man asks. He’s a big hefty guy in his thirties, red-faced, puffy-eyed, and desperate.

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not really one of the medical guys, but the doctors there assure me they’ve got a treatment option that can let you live pretty normally,” Sam replies, bending the truth a little. He hasn’t actually talked with any of Cas’ doctors at all about it, but Bobby got the okay to send him the brochures, and the brochures definitely say as much. That’s an indirect form of communication, so it’s not really a lie. It sounds better if he’s in direct contact with the organization. This guy needs the reassurance.

“Plus my brother had a similar sort of issue, and I know it worked for him. All he needs is a monthly treatment. Keeps his urges locked down tight.”

They talk a long time about the guy’s problems and fears, with the guy focusing a lot on some new-agey self-help book ideas about love words versus love actions, and how he can say that he doesn’t mean to hurt his wife but he has to follow that up with actions, and so forth and so on. At the end of the visit, he shakes Sam’s hand and thanks him, accepting Sam’s phone number in case he runs into trouble on the way there.

As he’s leaving, Sam impulsively turns back and asks, “Um, listen. My brother? Dean? He’s married to one of the docs. When you see him, will you tell him something for me?”

“Sure. Yeah. Absolutely,” the guy gushes, grateful and a little clingy.

“Tell him I’m sorry, and that I love him. That’s it. He’ll know what it’s about.”

The man agrees, and Sam goes on his way.

~

Sam gets another envelope in the mail at work only five days after that. Once again, it contains nothing more than a hastily scrawled message on a single piece of yellow memo paper. It just says,  _ Got your walking love letter. You nerd. _

He can’t stop smiling.

Weeks turn into months, and Sam gradually takes on more cases until he’s averaging one or two a week. With every potential patient he meets, he sends a message Dean’s way, some as innocuous as ‘Hope your day’s going well,’ and others more confessional, like ‘I’m starting to understand what you meant about normal being over-rated.’ Dean replies each time, but only in short messages. Most of his responses are terse to begin with, but he’s replying, and that alone means the world to Sam.

In a suburb outside Salt Lake City, he sends a kitsune with the message, “I was a dick to you because I was jealous.”

The next memo in the mail says,  _ Easy answer to jealousy – death by machete. Nice one. _

Via three werewolves, he tells Dean, “I'm so proud to have you as a brother.”

The mail comes to his desk.  _ You damn well should be proud. I’m awesome. _

By pishtaco in Santa Fe, “If there’s any good at all in how I turned out, I think I owe it all to you.”

_ Glad to see all that schooling paid off. I think you’ve actually learned something. _

Another werewolf: “Have you seen this new Star Trek reboot? They’re playing it on TV and it’s appalling. This is NOT the Captain Kirk I remember.”

_ It’s the worst thing since that ‘All Saints’ Day’ remake where Hatchet Man fights a CGI ball of fire for forty minutes. _

A young shifter: “I miss you.”

_ Bitch. _

Sam thinks about it, but in the end, he decides against sending “jerk” in response. He remembers his last attempts to revive their old teasing habits at Bobby’s and how badly he’d fucked that up. He doesn’t have that right, yet, he thinks. Maybe someday he will again, maybe he never will. For now, this is what he has, and he’s damn grateful for it.


	8. Nobody's a Mirror

Sam is halfway through a twelve-hour drive toward a hunt in Idaho when it occurs to him that his route will take him within a hundred miles of John’s prison. He debates with himself for over an hour before adjusting his Google Maps route. He’s done running away.

There’s a room with glass dividers between visitors and prisoners, and phones for them to talk through. He sits down, shoulders stiff, glowering at the chipped Formica.

On the other side of the glass, John comes into the room. Sam’s first startled thought is that he looks old. His stubble has gone gray, his cheeks are sallow, and there are heavy lines beneath his eyes. The muscles on his bared forearms show he’s still making the effort to keep in shape, but there’s no denying that the years have done a number on him.

John looks surprised to see him, but his expression quickly settles into amusement. He sits down with a smirk and picks up the phone.

“Well. Even in your thirties, you sulk like a six-year-old who never grew up. Figures. You still throwin’ temper tantrums about everything that needs doing?”

Sam’s anger ignites like it never left. Like all John had to do was push a button, and all the rage and fury he lived with for years comes roaring back. He remembers now how much he hates this man.

“You’re one to talk, considering where you are now,” he hisses into his phone, leaning forward over the desk. “In prison for life, rejected by all your remaining family and friends. What did you think would happen when you finally pushed every last one of us away?”

John raises an eyebrow, calm like he thinks he’s in control. He always did think he was in control, even in the stupidest of situations, and it burns Sam right up. He’s so goddamn smug. If Sam could just see a hint of doubt or humanity or regret in him, it would make a difference, but that’s not John.

“You know damn well I never did any of it because I wanted to be Mr. Popular. I did it because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Oh, and trying to kill Dean?” Sam snaps. “I suppose that was the right thing to do, too?”

John makes a weird, twisted kind of face, and his next words come out with a quiet shaky intensity that Sam has never heard from him before.

“Cutting that wolf’s throat was the hardest thing I have  _ ever _ had to do in my life.”

He leans forward with his fingers on the glass, eyes boring into Sam’s as he gradually picks up volume.

“The  _ hardest _ thing. Nothing in my life has  _ ever _ been harder than that, and you don’t know the first thing about real sacrifice. About loving someone so much, and having to do the right thing in spite of that. And you never will, Sam. You know why? Because you’re nothing but a coward and a disgrace who ran away when the going got tough! I am  _ ashamed _ to call you my son!”

Sam inhales sharply through his nose but holds his challenging glare. He’s always known what John thought of him, and it doesn’t change anything to hear it out loud.

But John’s not finished yet, lip curled in disgust. “You couldn’t even sacrifice your own goddamn ego, let alone something actually important. Oh no, the high-and-mighty Sam had to go off to damn college so he could look down on the rest of us. The high-and-mighty Sam had to live a life of luxury. _Dean_ at least knew what was important, knew there were lives on the line, and that the individual must come second to the greater good. _Dean_ was righteous. _Dean_ was brave and self-sacrificing, right up until that damn werewolf killed him.”

“Jesus, you are so far gone,” Sam scoffs. “Dean’s not dead, Dad. He’s just a werewolf now. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. He’s fine.”

John shakes his head, eyes glossy and brimming with sorrow.

“No, he was killed that day the werewolf bit him.”

“He’s got a fucking iPod jack in his car now. He sings Taylor Swift on the way to garage.”

“My son was killed that day and I wasn’t there to protect him. And the only thing I can do now is save him from a worse fate. To save him from killing even more, from becoming something Dean—the real Dean—would have hated. The real Dean never would have wanted to live like this.”

He looks up at Sam tearfully, as if he’s still hurt and perplexed by his youngest son. Sam just stares at him in disbelief.

“You can’t believe I wanted to do it,” John pleads. “I could never want that. I  _ had  _ to do it. For Dean.”

His face is a picture of vulnerability and regret. It’s exactly what Sam always thought he wanted John to reveal, and now that it’s in front of him, there’s no triumph in it after all.

He feels pity and revulsion, because this isn’t a victory. It’s just sad.

“You’re wrong, Dad,” Sam says with deliberate calm, already knowing it won’t do any good. “You didn’t have to do anything. Dean’s okay. He’s not a monster, he’s not killing people. He’s been treated. There’s a medical treatment now, and he’s in control.”

As predicted, John closes up, breathing out in frustrated resignation. “There is no control. I know you want to think that but it never works.”

“I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen him, in person. He was fine.”

“They lie, Sam.” The conviction is back in full force. “They’re not human anymore and they lie, and you want to believe them—hell,  _ I _ want to believe them, but they count on that. They’re designed to blend in, to pass among us. The vast majority of monsters hide their true appearance until they feed, and why? Why? To gain trust!”

John starts to work himself up again, angry tears still in his eyes. His words come faster, tripping over each other as he leans forward like he thinks he can still convince Sam.

“It’s part of their predation strategy. Understand? This thing looks and sounds like your brother, but it’s not your brother anymore, and if you had half the sense you were raised to have, you’d be able to see that.”

He flops back in his chair with an angry huff of disgust. “But I figure you won’t. You never did listen to me except to go directly against whatever I told you to do.”

Incredulous and yet somehow not surprised, Sam shakes his head. “If I never listened, it’s because the stuff you told me to do was wrong.  _ This _ is wrong. Killing Dean is wrong. Killing anyone who can otherwise be saved is wrong! And you know what? While we’re on the topic, giving up on college, giving up on  _ my whole future  _ just to throw my life away on some godforsaken hunt on a crusade of vengeance that will never, ever end  _ also would’ve been wrong!” _

John slams his hand down on the counter. “Don’t you talk to me like that, boy!”

“Or what!?” Sam laughs bitterly. “Or what, Dad? You gonna climb through that glass and try to kill me, too?”

John growls. “Sometimes evil has to be done so that others can survive to be good. No war was ever won by soldiers who refused to get their hands dirty with the blood of innocents. You think those boys I shot in Vietnam were evil, Sam? You think they  _ wanted  _ to be in that war? No! But somebody’s gotta do it! Dean understood that. Dean was ready to die to do the right thing. Dean killed for it like I killed for it. He was ready to shoulder that burden for the rest of us. And when he died, he died a hero! Who the hell do you think you are, that you can live off the moral sacrifices of others, safe in your home because someone  _ else  _ was willing to forever stain their soul in order to do what had to be done!”

Leaning in and jabbing the counter with a finger, Sam grits out,  _ “Dean. Isn’t. Dead.” _

John shakes his head wretchedly. “I swear to god, I wish that were true. I wish that were true. I wish that were true.”

Fed up, Sam drops back in his chair and gives John a long quiet look. He takes in a deep breath and then lets it out slowly.

“You know,” he says at last, “the only good thing to have come out of this is that you’ll never see the outside of a prison cell again. I’m surprised they didn’t give you the needle for what you’ve done. You’re truly remorseless.”

Accepting this, John calmly nods. “I was a sure thing for the death penalty. Didn’t even mind at first. I’ve committed necessary evils, and I always knew the cost. But then I eventually realized, I have a responsibility to stay in this world. As long as that wolf is out there, walking around in my son’s body, he’s a danger to everybody, and that fault is all mine. That job is on me.”

Sam continues to stare at him, sad and appalled.

“Someday I’ll find an opportunity,” John says gravely. “Someday I’ll get out, and then I’ll finish what I started, my duty to Dean. And once that’s done, and he’s free of this curse, I’ll follow him into death by killing myself. I swear it on Mary’s own soul.”

There doesn’t seem to be much to say after that. Sam lets the guard know he’s done, gets up and leaves.

He thinks he’ll probably never come back.

~

That night, lying on the motel bed, Sam looks over to the side where the second bed would have been if he’d gotten a double. It’s been almost a decade since the last time he stayed in a double. In fact, it’s probably been a decade since he’s used an actual motel, as he’s always chosen to fork over the money for a Hilton or Marriott even when he couldn’t really afford it, just so he could try to distance himself from his childhood when he traveled for work or with Jess.

He thinks about how he used to share rooms with Dean and always had to quibble over who had the bathroom first. He can remember the Laundromat runs, the gas station food, and the inconsistent schooling with a kind of nostalgia now, but for the first time, he also feels sad for their childhood.

He’d always been angry about it as a kid, fully aware that he was being screwed over, seething and just itching for a fight. But it never really occurred to him that it was also okay to mourn the childhood he’d lost. He thinks now that Dean had mourned a lot. Dean never lit up in anger like Sam did because Dean was sad, instead.

And in a way, all of Sam’s anger had backfired on him. Sam had sworn to himself that John would never control his life, but that determination ended up influencing so many of Sam’s decisions. He’d gone into corporate law because of what it represented, the polar opposite of John’s blue-collar pride. He’d insisted on the huge house to counter John’s nomadic lifestyle. Even his relationship with Jess had been tainted by his lies about the supernatural, because he’d wanted to pretend that he was better than John. That he could live without his knowledge of the occult and that the supernatural would never affect his life.

Dean, despite his superficial adoption of John’s car, John’s music, and John’s crusade, somehow managed to separate and become his own person far more successfully than Sam ever did. Dean had followed his own feelings, had had his own reasons for hunting and doing what he did. Maybe Dean’s always been more in touch with himself than Sam was, even under the old macho-posturing facade.

Maybe someday Sam will earn back the opportunity to find out.


	9. The Apology

Sam collapses to his knees on the concrete floor of the warehouse, rapidly bleeding out from a deep gut wound, but arguably the winner of that fight. The monster’s corpse lies crumpled next to him, coiled in IV tubing. It’s too late for the victims too, which means Sam’s the only one still breathing, but probably not for long.

He hadn’t been ready. He’d gotten too confident with all the monsters wanting to be saved, and was too relaxed in his attempt to start a dialogue. He let his guard down and it came back to bite him. It’s kind of embarrassing, but on the bright side, no one’s likely to find him fast enough for Sam to worry about it.

Reaching again for his phone, he tries to convince himself there’s still time to call 911 and get some EMTs to come staunch the bleeding and get a transfusion into him. But the room is spinning and the phone remains stubbornly out of reach where it fell during the fight.

Feebly, he struggles to pull himself closer, but gives up after a few minutes. He’s barely budged two inches. The gaping gut wound is agonizing, and it flares up to blinding white-out levels of pain every time he moves.

He feels himself on the border of passing out, and tries to fight it, knowing that if he doesn’t summon help before he faints, he won’t ever wake up again. He’s losing that battle. But right before the darkness takes him completely, he hears the rattle of the sheet-metal door sliding open at the far end of the warehouse, and the familiar voice of his brother.

“Sam?! SAM!!”

Yeah, that’s Dean. Which… doesn’t make any sense.

“Aren’ you’n Colora’o?” Sam slurs before passing out.

~

When he next opens his eyes, it’s to the sterile white walls and unnaturally odorless air of an unidentifiable hospital. An empty IV bag hangs by his bed. Judging by the angle of the bright sunlight coming in through the high window, it’s probably late afternoon. How long has he been out? Mouth dry, he tries to swallow and grimaces—his throat feels like sandpaper.

He tries to life a hand to rub at his eyes, but it’s trapped under the warmth of someone else’s. He looks down his body and sees Dean slumped over the bed from a chair pulled up at the side, face buried in his elbow, maybe sleeping.

Sam moves and Dean jerks his head up, eyes puffy.

“Sam!”

“Dean,” Sam rasps, and then clears his throat. “Where am I?”

“Grand Lake County Hospital. Cas pulled some strings and got you transferred here from Idaho.”

“How did you know to find me?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been exchanging these messages, and I was thinking about you, and I just  _ knew.  _ Somehow I  _ knew  _ you were in trouble, or you were gonna be, and I just… got Cas to do this tracking spell while I looked up any possible case signs you might’ve picked outta the news. Got straight into the car.”

“Well… thanks.” Sam starts to smile, but it turns into a wince as the stitches pull in his abdomen.

Dean frowns down at his stomach, and then looks away, lips pressed unhappily. “Look. I need you to know, man. Bobby says you thought I was still mad at you. You could’ve  _ died  _ thinking I was mad at you, and I’m not. I haven’t been mad since the night you left. I didn’t even know you thought I was. Hell, it was all my fault anyway.”

_ “Y-Your _ fault?” Sam sputters in incredulity. “What? No, it’s—”

“No, listen to me, Sammy. I didn’t tell you about the werewolf thing, and that’s on me. I should’ve trusted you. You never were the kind of person to make a stink over something like that. You aren’t Dad, and you never have been. I should’ve trusted you, and damn it, it wasn’t even about that, really. It was just me being petty. Because I, well, I was ashamed of myself, and I took it out on you.”

“Dean, no. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Being a werewolf—”

“Nah, not the werewolf thing.” Dean waves off his protests with a wry shake of the head. “That’s just a medical condition, and nothing to be ashamed of. I get that. Cas has drilled that into my head enough times. No, I mean…”

He takes a deep breath, clearly steeling himself.

“I was ashamed because you were right. When we were kids, and you kept insisting on getting out of hunting, on going domestic and straight-laced and actually living life—you were right, and I tried to hold you back from that. I fought you on it, and I let Dad jerk me around.”

“No, man, that’s not—”

“And you were right to change your number, too. You know I called you a dozen times in that first year? Every time with another sob story that I thought might talk you into coming back to hunting, and I was wrong to do it. By the time I realized it, with Cas… I just didn’t want to admit it and for you to realize what an idiot I’d been. Which is stupid. You’ve always known I was an idiot—”

“You’re not an idiot, Dean. You trusted Dad. You believed in him. That’s not stupidity. That’s loyalty, and you’re a better man than I’ve ever been. We should be able to trust our parents. You’re not wrong for thinking that.”

“I know. But I am sorry, Sam. I was cold to you and rebuffed you when you needed a shoulder to lean on, and it was all out of my stupid sense of pride.”

Sam feels his eyes mist over.

“God, Dean… I’m sorry, too.” He gropes for Dean’s hand again and squeezes it. “For not trusting you to know what you were doing with Cas. And I’m sorry for trying to pull an end run around you by attacking him. I’ve been a total asshole about everything.”

Dean ducks his head and smiles. “That’s okay. I know you were just trying to protect me. Cas understands that too, now, by the way—he’s just embarrassed to admit it. But I’m going to talk to him about seeing you, giving this whole brother-in-law thing a fresh start.”

Sam makes a face. “I didn’t make a very good impression on him the first time around.”

Dean huffs a quiet laugh, and then looks up for a second before letting his mouth curve into a tentatively playful smirk.

“Well, now, that just ain’t true. You don’t think he was impressed? C’mon, Sam. How many average lawyers can go hand-to-hand with a werewolf, without even any silver, and still win the fight?”

Sam groans and pulls his pillow out from behind his head to cover his own face.

“Cas thinks you’re a modern-day Hercules,” Dean teases. “You hear that, Perry ‘the machete’ Mason? Impressive’s an understatement.”

“Please stop.”

“Erin ‘the mountain’ Brockovich? Daniel ‘you-can’t-handle-the-height’ Kaffee?”

_ “Dean.” _

~

Two days later, his stomach wound is looking surprisingly good. The pain is almost non-existent, and the doctors say they’re very happy about the healing rate. They advise him not to mess with the stitches yet or do any strenuous lifting or stretching, but he’s good to leave the hospital and the only med he needs is some infection-preventing cream that he’s supposed to apply over the wound every night.

Bobby suggests they all go to the bar and grill for a celebratory drink.

“Are you insane?” Sam asks from the hospital room bathroom, where he’s finally changing into a normal pair of jeans and flannel. “I can’t drink, Bobby.”

Bobby looks chagrined. “Well. About that. I may have been too hasty in jumping the alcoholic-gun there.”

Sam opens the door and stands there in his socks. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a difference between a habit and an addiction. I brought up the recent-sobriety thing to your doctors because I thought it might affect their test results, and they said you had the liver of a healthy marathon runner, and that five drinks a day isn’t an issue for someone of your size.”

“I… really?” Sam blinks at the two of them, confused. It’s a fucking weird thing to hear after the constant misery that’s been the last three months. He very definitely remembers going through withdrawal.

“Really.” Bobby looks uncomfortable, and maybe a little cranky on top of that. “I asked about the withdrawal you said you went through, and they said it sounded a lot more like like a rough hangover mixed with the stomach flu. Symptoms are similar, but you were better and driving again after five days. Real withdrawal would’ve given you the DTs if you were an alcoholic.”

“But what are the odds that I just got the flu the exact same day I quit drinking? And I still want it all the time.”

Bobby shrugs and Dean takes over. “You were pretty toasted after the divorce thing, and we all know the hard stuff suppresses the immune system. Cas said you tried to visit the clinic the morning you left. You touch the door handle? That place is a hotbed of every virus that comes through Grand Lake.”

Sam did do that.

“Oh,” he says after a second. It still just seems strange. He’s not sure he really believes it, but the hospital’s not really the place to start throwing around words like ‘quack,’ especially if these are Cas’ former colleagues and he’s trying to play nice.

“Well, I don’t know that’s it’s such a healthy habit for me anyway,” he says at last. “Probably just as well that I cut back.”

Dean grins and slaps a hand on his shoulder. “Sounds like a plan. I want my Sammy in top shape and peak health if he’s going to be running all over the country on rescue missions for us again!”

~

They end up back at the Sagebrush BBQ and Grill, same as the last time he’d been in town. Also like last time, Cas is already at the place and waiting for them at the bar. He’s got a bowl of peanuts sitting by his elbow along with a glass of beer.

“Three pulled pork and fries,” Dean orders for him, Sam, and Bobby with a rap of his knuckles on the bar. “And a round of El Sol for a toast!”

Sam is a little annoyed by the beer order on his behalf, but damn, he does really want it and it’s probably worth testing the doctor’s theory at least once. He accepts the drink as it’s slid across the counter to him.

“To reunions!” Dean says, and the others echo him.

“To reunions!”

Sam takes a drink of his beer and sets it on the bar. He feels fine. It’s bit early to say, but he doesn’t feel like he’s pining for the rest of it. The food arrives promptly with a wink at Sam from Pamela—he feels his face heat up but the thought isn’t unpleasant—and conversation flows around them in the warm and friendly atmosphere.

About ten minutes in, Cas gets up and comes over to the seat by Sam, clearly positioning himself for a quiet word on the side. Dean, Bobby, and Benny are talking and laughing about some guy named Garth and his face-off with a moose when he’d been hunting for a restless spirit in the woods. Sam shifts nervously on his stool and chances a small smile in Cas’ direction.

“I’m glad to see you on your feet and looking well,” Cas says to start, obviously already familiar with the medical situation.

“Yeah. Uh, thanks for getting me transferred closer to you guys. It’s just, really nice to have Dean around again. Smiling.”

Cas smiles and nods, looking at the werewolf in question just as he throws his arms up in some high point of the story and the trio roars with laughter.

“Also, I, uh,” Sam says awkwardly, “I wanted to apologize again for trying to kill you. It wasn’t personal, if that helps.” He grimaces at himself.

“I accept your apology,” Cas says serenely as he sips his own beer. “And in all honesty, I have to apologize as well.” He looks down for a second, then back up with these piercing earnest eyes, and Sam can tell what Dean must see in him. The guy is superhumanly sincere.

“I was deliberately unwelcoming to you,” he begins, “right from the start. I felt threatened by you. Not from the attack in the kitchen, but before that. Dean’s always loved his little brother so fiercely and you always featured so prominently in his stories. I feared I couldn’t compete with that. But since seeing how sad Dean has been after you left again…” Cas shakes his head. “I’ve come to realize that it’s more important that Dean be happy, and that by trying to keep you two apart, I was contributing to his unhappiness. I hope I’ve grown since then.”

Sam tries to make a demurring gesture, but Cas persists.

“No, really. I accept that for Dean, you will always come first, but I understand now that that doesn’t mean Dean doesn’t love me with all of his being, in a different way. I want to set that animosity aside, shake hands and start fresh. Will you be my brother-in-law, Sam?”

“I-I mean, of course!” Sam sputters and grabs Cas’ proffered hand with hearty enthusiasm. They shake, smile at each other, and then both take a drink. Sam finishes his first beer and doesn’t feel any urge to pick up another. In fact, he feels really good already. With a raised hand, he orders a soda and Pamela brings it over to him with a predatory smile.

“That caffeine’ll keep you up all night, honey. Hope you’ve got plans other than sleeping.” She drops him another wink and moves on along to the next customer and the kitchen.

Sam is blinking after her with his eyebrows raised when Bobby comes up beside him. Cas has disappeared off into the restroom.

“I just wanted to say you did a damn fine job on those kitsunes,” Bobby says to Sam. “They’ve settled in right quick, and we couldn’t ask for a more neighborly bunch.”

“I’m glad it worked out for them. They really seemed excited by the prospect of not having to scrounge in morgues anymore for their pituitary glands.”

Pamela crosses past him again on her way to the other end of the bar with some serious sway to her hips in those low-cut jeans. Sam finds himself tracing down her back with his eyes and then takes another sip only to find that the napkin his beer has been resting on has a phone number on it. His eyebrows climb on his face. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for that yet after Jess, but it feels good to be wanted. He folds the napkin and puts it in his jacket pocket.

“Listen… I just wanted to say, I was wrong.”

He whips around and stares at Bobby in bafflement. “What? About what?”

“When I said you were like John.” Bobby shakes his head. “John would never have put his life on the line trying to help a non-human like that. That was damn admirable, boy, and don’t you forget it.”

“Well, shucks, Bobby,” Sam jokes with a grin.

“No, I mean it. You’ve got a good heart, Sam. Both of you boys have. And I’m just glad you’ve finally settled your differences and each recognized it. Now,” he thunks his beer glass down on the bar. “Enough with the touchy-feely crap. I need some  _ real _ alcohol if I’m to get the taste of that heartfelt confession out of my mouth.”

~

Sam goes back to Bobby’s to stay the night like before, only with a great deal of hugging and reaffirmations of welcome and respect from the group before they part this time.

He’s only had a single beer, and he feels great. Not a twinge of alcohol longing in him. It must have been nothing more than the flu after all, and the natural yearning one feels for comfort food or comfort drinks during a hard time. The divorce was rough on him emotionally, after all, and the whole misunderstanding with Dean and Cas had only compounded the issue. He’s not surprised he had such a hard time of it, in retrospect. It’s a relief that that part of his life seems to be over now.

He fires up his laptop, since Pamela was right and the late-night caffeine really has left his blood strumming. He might as well do a little work while he’s here; nothing says he has to be in the office to prepare documents or go over research results.

His inbox has a message from Jess, and he opens it with a small frown of curiosity.

It’s a request to Skype as soon as he’s free.

He opens up Skype and logs in. She’s online already and picks up almost as soon as he touches the call button.

“Sam! Hey.” She smiles a little, looking slightly flushed.

“Hey,” he says carefully. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing, just, I hadn’t talked to you in a while, and we said it was going to be amicable, so. Y’know. Just checking in, as a friend. How are you?” She seems a little embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“Uh, I’m good. I’m good. How are you?” He asks, feeling strangely artificial. He misses how they used to interact.

“Good.” She nods and chews her lip. After a second, she says, “Where are you? I don’t recognize the background.”

“Oh! I’m in Colorado. I, uh, decided to reconnect with my brother. You know,” he dredges up the versions of his past he told her years ago. “The one who… went into the traveling salesman business.”

“I remember. And you decided to meet up in Colorado of all places?”

“Well, sort of. He actually lives here now. Got out of the traveling thing, and now he’s got a garage he runs. I think it suits him a lot better,” he confides. God, he wants to confide in her. He never did, apart from the occasional metaphorical retellings of actual arguments he’d had with his dad and the reasons he’d cut off contact with him. He’d barely mentioned Dean at all, except for one story about his brother feeding him cereal with water three times a day when the food money ran out. Even that was more of a ‘and that’s why I hate my father’ kind of story.

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re speaking again. I know it was something that always bothered you.”

“Yeah, I—I guess I hadn’t really admitted it to myself, but it did. I really missed him.”

Jess smiles at him with a warmth and fondness he hasn’t seen in almost two years.

“Tell me about him.”

“Well, uh.” He can’t exactly say anything about the hospital situation or supernatural stuff, so he defaults to the mundane. “He co-owns a garage, like I said, and lives up here in this tiny little tourist spot in the Rockies. He’s married to this doctor up here, and Bobby—this old friend of my dad’s who used to watch us sometimes when we were kids—he moved here too, so they’ve sort of patched together this little found family between the three of them. More, maybe. They’ve got these close friends they’ve been introducing me to.”

Jess bites her lip and looks indecisive for a second, then asks, “You mean, female friends?”

Sam’s a little nonplussed. That can’t mean what it sounded like. “Uh, yeah. I mean, there’s Charlie and Gilda, and this sheriff whose name I can’t remember…”

“Have you been seeing any of them? Or other women, I mean?”

“I’m not sure it’s really your business anymore,” he says slowly, taken aback at this completely unexpected turn. It feels so unlike Jess to complicate a clean cut after making a decision. He’s a little peeved, honestly, and tempted to rub it in. “But I did get a phone number from this bartender today, Pamela something. I’ll probably call—”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, of course,” Jess says quickly, looking unhappy. “You should—you should do what you want.”

“Jess,” he says finally, exasperated. “What’s this really about?”

Flustered, she blushes red in that cute way she always used to, when she’s embarrassed about something but determined to see it out. He’d always admired that about her.

“I just… I realized recently that I may have been too hasty in leaving. I didn’t even give us a chance to work our issues out in counseling or anything, and the truth is… Well. I miss you. I love you, never stopped loving you, but now I miss you as well, and living apart has sort of made me realize that the stuff I was blaming you for was actually all my own hang-ups. The house, the dog, the VHS, the long-term career strategy—all of it was stuff I didn’t want to face or think about, stuff I was being unreasonably negative about.”

“Jess—” he starts in protest.

“I know, just hear me out,” she says, firm and committed now. “I was finding fault in everything you do, everything we did together. But now I realize that this negativity is just a force of habit for me, a way of thinking. It was me being unwilling to face the reality of living an expensive lifestyle in a high cost-of-living area, and here you were, trying to do the actual adult thing all the time, and I didn’t recognize that until now. I didn’t recognize how much you were doing, how much of the load you were shouldering. And I want to do better and try again. Counseling, whatever you ask—I’ll work on my issues, I promise.”

Sam is momentarily speechless. “Okay. You’re telling me you want to apologize and cancel the divorce.”

“Yes.”

“You want to go to counseling, because you were the one in the wrong.”

“Yes. Sam, you were right the whole time. I didn’t give you a chance. I didn’t give  _ us  _ a chance, and I want to fix that.”

He stares into the distance beyond the computer screen for almost a minute. This all makes perfect sense suddenly. Absently, he repeats after her, “I was right the whole time.”

“Yes.” She really means it, too. It’s in her eyes, in her voice. “I’m  _ so  _ sorry. Please, Sam. Please let me try again.”

“Okay, yeah,” he says. “That’s fine. Yes. We’ll try again.”

Jess’ face lights up, happy and exuberant, with tears in her eyes. “We will?”

“Yeah. Sure. Absolutely.”

“You won’t regret this. I’m really going to pull my weight this time, learn to listen better. I swear it. Sam, I love you so much.”

“Yeah, honey, love you too. I’ve got to go now,” he says.

“Oh, um, okay, but we can talk again soon, right? When will you be back from your trip?”

“Yeah, I’ll call you.”

“Okay, I love yo—”

“Yeah, love you too. Gotta go, bye.”

He hangs up.

Of course, he thinks to himself. Of course, it all makes sense now. Jess was wrong, and she’s sorry. Dean’s sorry, they’re all sorry. I was right the whole time. Why didn’t I even think about that?

He feels very numb, like he’s all alone again, worse than before even. Maybe this is true loneliness right here. Maybe this is true regret.

He looks around Bobby’s guest room, and being Bobby’s, sure enough there are weapons hidden in all the usual locations. He finds a revolver after opening a few nightstand drawers, checks to see that it’s loaded, and then puts it to his temple.

He pulls the trigger and blows his own brains out.


	10. Building Something New

Sam’s eyes open and he’s still in the warehouse, hanging from a chain, injured and weak. Blood drenches the front of his shirt. More of it is slowly draining out of him via long plastic tube into a sterile medical bag.

His hands are tied together over his head and he can’t feel them at all, just a throbbing numbness starting somewhere around his elbows. It’s a bad sign for keeping his hands in working order, but at least it means it doesn’t hurt as much when he has to forcibly dislocate his thumb to get free.

After a great deal of heavy breathing and pulling in different directions, he finally breaks loose, falling and hitting the cement hard with his face. He drags himself agonizingly slowly over to the pile of stuff he’d brought in with him—his main phone has been smashed, but the back-up he keeps in the lining of his jacket is ok—and tears into the hidden pocket with his teeth.

Using his nose and lips to activate the touch-screen, he calls Bobby via speed-dial. The ringing seems to last forever, and for a long minute, Sam’s convinced he’s going to die and all anyone will ever find of him will be a two-minute long silent voicemail.

But the ringing stops and a gruff voice answers.

“Hello?”

“Please… help…” Sam croaks out in a hoarse whisper, unable to raise his voice any louder. “Djinn in Idaho Falls.”

Bobby’s voice instantly shifts into business mode, which is a welcome relief. At least it means someone’s listening.

“Sam!? SAM!?”

This seems vaguely familiar, Sam thinks, and then passes out.

~

Sam wakes up in a hospital bed, bright fluorescent lights glaring down on him from the ceiling, listening to the throaty rumble of the ancient A/C.

Slowly, he moves his eyes lower to see Dean unmoving in a chair in the corner, head in his hands. He’s nowhere near close to Sam’s bed, not the way he was last time, but he’s bent forward at a similar angle.

Casting his gaze to the small table on his right, he sees a tray with a tiny container of hospital jello and a plastic spoon. Next to that sits a memo pad with ‘Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center’ printed across the top.

At least that rules out any medically inexplicable transfer to Colorado this time. It could be a good sign. It’s a bit too early to say.

Sam makes a noise in his throat and Dean startles, looks up and comes over.

“You came to get me?” Sam asks, keeping his face cautiously neutral.

Immediately, Dean’s shoulders droop.

“No, Garth got you,” he says miserably. “He was in the area when Bobby got your call. I’m sorry—”

Sam hastens to backtrack. “No, you don’t—I didn’t expect—I wouldn’t have asked you to, man. I called Bobby for a reason.”

Dean stares at him, suddenly pissed. “I would have come if I’d known, Sam!” He shoves the chair back into its corner with a thump, and then rounds on him. “Would always fucking come for you, alright? Even if you fucking murdered half the world, I’d fucking come for you.”

Sam pulls back, surprised, and says in small voice, “Okay.”

Dean gives the foot of the bed a gentle kick as he continues to grumble. “So get over yourself. Jesus. You’re my little brother. Of course I’d fucking come.”

He stomps his way over and pats a hand on Sam’s forehead, gruffly checking him over like he’s assessing injuries and color all over again, even though Sam has obviously already been stitched up and bandaged by actual doctors. Then, after only the tiniest hesitation, Dean leans in and hugs him.

“Okay,” Sam says again with a slight waver into Dean’s shoulder, vision blurry and throat tight. He can feel the hope rising in his chest, but he suppresses it, still insecure.

He can’t help but check again. “Um… and this is real?”

Dean pulls back and stares at him, then slumps down onto the bed with resigned comprehension. “You can’t possibly be feeling good enough right now to think this is a hallucination of your greatest wish come true.”

“Yeah, no, of course not,” Sam bluffs, embarrassed. He picks at the bleach-worn threads of his sheets and wonders.

Dean watches him a moment longer, then reaches over and picks up the jello cup.

Opening it up, he rubs his finger over the surface of the jello a few times, lips pursed while he moves his tongue over his teeth and shifts his jaw.

Then he spits a huge wad of saliva into the cup.

“…Dean,” Sam says warningly.

Dean picks up the plastic spoon and stirs his spit in, before scooping up a hefty amount and coming for Sam’s face. Sam realizes what he’s aiming for and throws his heavily bandaged hands up to stop him.

“No.  _ No! _ Don’t! Dean, stop it!”

Dean grabs his injured wrist in one hand, forcing it down and pinning it lightly with a knee. The other keeps coming with the spoon.

“Dean, that’s gross! Stop! STOP!” Sam flails feebly with his remaining arm, still weakened by from blood loss.

With a vicious smirk, Dean traps Sam’s arm with his free hand, pushing the spit-jello further into his face.

“C’mon, Sammy, open up. You need to eat to get your strength back.”

Sam struggles with everything he’s got left, turning his face this way and that to avoid the impending spoonful.

“Ew, EW! THAT’S NOT FUNNY, DEAN!  _ DON’T! _ STO-PBBGHFHBTHHHH!”

Dean’s fingers pinch his nose shut to force his mouth open, and Sam coughs and chokes on the spit-infused jello shoved into his mouth,half-retching up the gleaming green chunks.

Dean backs off, sadistically smug.

Sam uncurls himself from the spasming fetal position he’s fallen into, gorge rising even after he’s ejected the mess, and glares at his brother with all the hate and loathing he can possibly summon up.

“ _ Ugh, god! _ What the  _ fuck,  _ Dean?  _ WHY?  _ What the hell is wrong with you!?”

Unrepentant, Dean just grins back.

“This still look like a djinn paradise to you?”

“Oh my god.” Sam shudders and forces down another retch.

Dean shrugs, still pleased with himself for his improvisation.

Glowering reproachfully at his brother, Sam turns the idea over in his mind, and is surprised to realize he’s convinced. The pain in his wrists and hands feels sharp and real, more than the fictional stomach wound had in the dream. This is really happening. Sam really made it out of that warehouse.

This is really Dean, standing in front of him for the first time since Sam left him bleeding and betrayed in his smashed up kitchen.

The guilt and shame come flooding back, and he rubs a hand over his face before pushing his hair out of the way.

“Um, listen. I never properly apologized…”

“’S fine, Sam. I got your messages through the vamps and Bobby.”

“Right, but…” Sam takes a deep breath. “I need to do this face to face. I’m sorry for trying to kill Cas and for generally being a dick all those years. I made a lot of unfair assumptions about you, and let my ego convince me I was in the right, without ever even taking your situation or perspective into account.”

Dean glances away, uncomfortable. “Okay, shut up already.”

“And I’m sorry for cutting you out of my life for over a decade. I should’ve been there for you, and I wasn’t. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t listening.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m sorry for missing your wedding. I wish I’d been there to see it, to share that special day with you—”

“Okay, jesus, shut up already! We don’t need to break out the flowers and tissue boxes, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll shut up. Sorry.” Sam says with a small tentative quirk of the lips.

“I just said, don’t—” Dean catches the smile, does a double take, and narrows his eyes. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

They smile hesitantly at each other, but Sam knows they’re going to be okay.

~

Sam’s stuck in the hospital for observation overnight. He ends up taking a nap, and when he wakes up again, Dean’s still around, finishing off a bag of Burger King and watching some Spanish-language soap opera on TV with his feet up on the bed.

“Do you understand what they’re saying?” Sam asks, curious.

Dean startles, not having realized he was awake. He offers Sam a small fry before answering, one eye still on the TV. Sam takes it gratefully.

“I understand enough. This guy here, Ricardo, he’s got amnesia and thinks he’s a cop, but actually—” Dean goes on to describe the cheesy plot with a bit of his old grin. It features several double-crosses, illegitimate heirs, and more than one set of identical twins.

Sam picks at the fries, more distracted by this new revelation than the ridiculous storyline.

“I didn’t realize you spoke Spanish.”

“Yeah, well, not really. Spent most of a year on this series of chupacabra infestations around the southern border, and had to learn a little to confer with the experts. And it wasn’t like I knew anyone else in the area, so…”

“When was this?”

“A year, maybe two after you left.”

They both fall silent for a minute more as Dean watches the program and Sam watches him. It occurs to him how little he actually knows about his brother these days. All these years, Sam’s been hung up on a distorted memory of who Dean is, and he hasn’t been doing justice to the real Dean in front of him. He resolves to catch up on the time he missed and really make an effort not to take this second chance for granted. He breaks the silence.

“I’m glad you weren’t completely alone for those years. Before Cas, I mean. You had friends.”

A beat passes before Dean replies with same relaxed smile and nonchalant ease he used to use on confidence jobs. He hasn’t stayed in practice, or maybe Sam’s gotten better at seeing through it. “Friends. Sure.”

“Or working acquaintances at least?” Sam hopefully prods.

Dean breathes out a sigh and drops the grin, resigned. “I did alright. It’s not like I was hurting for company in the biblical sense, y’know? Never had a problem finding comfort when I needed it. And if I needed somebody who kinda, well, knew when not to poke at me, I had Bobby and I had—”

There’s a subtle tic in his jaw, and he leaves the word ‘Dad’ unspoken, moving on.

“The point is, it wasn’t whatever you’re thinking, so you can stow the sympathy. Now do you mind? My soaps are on.”

Sam presses on, ignoring the soap thing. “Was there a group or anything you could turn to, contacts within the hunting community at least? I know Dad’s always been defiantly anti-social, but he wasn’t around to ride your ass anyway. You weren’t totally solo for five years straight between me leaving and you meeting Cas, were you?”

Dean’s silence speaks for itself.

The guilt washes over him again, fresh in its intensity. You’d think he’d be getting used to that by now. His next question is hesitant, softer.

“Did you ever think… maybe if I hadn’t left—”

That seems to cross some sort of line, because Dean finally turns away from the TV to face Sam, bristling with exasperation.

“Sam, it wasn’t… Yeah, okay, I was angry for a while, alright? But that wasn’t—that wasn’t because you shoulda stayed or done anything different.”

“I could’ve taken you with me, or kept in contact at least—”

“Yeah,  _ maybe! _ ” Dean throws his hands in the air. “But you don’t need to hear that kind of stuff, okay? It wasn’t on you to—”

“You practically raised me. Dad skipped out and dumped all the responsibilities for everything on you. I owe you, Dean, and I think I can handle a little conversation about the repercussions it had on your side when I—”

“I don’t want to talk about it—”

“Because you don’t want me to know how hard I made it on you!”

“Because it’s hard for me to talk to you,” Dean snaps, then looks down at his hands and deflates. “I don’t know how to be a brother to you without also being everything else, and it’s hard, okay? I want to take over your recuperation even now. I still look at you and I see that little kid who needs more food or is pissed about moving towns and missing the science fair that he’s been preparing for all this time, and it isn’t fair to you, and I can’t make it fair, and I know that. That’s not who you are anymore. I get that. I just… I’m still trying to catch up. Okay?”

Sam stares at him in astonishment.

Dean rubs his face. “I don’t like putting stuff on you, okay? And  _ it’s not you. _ It’s me. I know you wanna share all burdens or something, want me to open up and cry on your shoulder maybe, I dunno. But I don’t—I  _ can’t  _ do that with you.” He looks away again, flushing a little, and mutters, “That’s what I have Cas for.”

Sam slumps in defeat. “Oh.”

Dean slides a hand uncomfortably through the short-trimmed hair at the back of his own head. “I just. I do that stuff with Cas, okay? So you don’t have to, to dig into it or whatever. I’ve worked through that shit.” He laughs somewhat bitterly. “I have  _ really _ worked through that shit. And I turned out okay.”

Clenching his jaw, Sam looks down at his lap and does his best not to sound plaintive. “But I don’t want to be your, your kid brother or your ward or whatever anymore; I don’t wanna be protected. I want to have a relationship between us as peers.”

When he looks up, embarrassed, Dean’s gaze is steady and genuine. “And we can do that. But that’s gotta be, y’know,  _ built _ . Over time. Not this blast-from-the-past stuff.”

“…Okay.” It’s not exactly what Sam wanted, but in a way that’s reassuring. It feels real, and he desperately craves and values ‘real’ right now, especially after the whole fake world he just barely escaped.

“So, um,” he says, searching for a happier topic, but still wanting to learn more about Dean’s life in the years between seeing him. “I still haven’t heard the actual story of how you and Cas got together. I mean, Bobby sorta gave me a rundown in the truck, but that was, ah, pointed…”

Eyes narrowed, Dean takes a long breath, and for a minute Sam thinks that topic will be off-limits too, but then he relaxes and scoots the chair around so he can prop his boots up on the side of the bed instead.

And Dean starts to tell him.

He talks honestly about Cas, not just about how great things are now, but about how rocky and uncertain they were in the beginning. How afraid Dean was, and how hard he fought against letting Cas in.

As Dean talks about the initial trust issues, and the panic attacks, and the times he almost cut bait and bolted, Sam realizes that he wasn’t wrong in his initial suspicions about domesticity being out of character for Dean. He just hadn’t accounted for the years they’d spent breaking down Dean’s defensiveness and working through the aftermath of all of Dad’s bullshit.

“I  _ did  _ struggle with opening up to it. Went through a lot, said some awful things to Cas in the beginning, and hurt him some too. And Cas didn’t get it at first, kept asking me to do things or feel things in a way that just—he didn’t understand what it was like living with Dad, in the way that we did. He didn’t get that I couldn’t just ‘talk to other friends.’ And he’d get impatient because he didn’t understand, though he does now. Things weren’t easy. Things got this good because we worked through stuff and trusted each other.”

While Dean talks about all of this, Sam listens,  _ really _ listens, in a way he hasn’t done in years.

And he finds he really likes the guy he’s getting to know.

~

Sam is already four days late when he finally makes it back to the office.

He’d called in from the hospital and had plenty of accumulated sick leave, but none of the senior litigators ever take sick days, and it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb on his annual review.

Covered with stitches, cuts, and bruises, he’s just working his way carefully down the hall, laptop case in hand, when his direct supervisor, Harry Maybourne, catches him from an open doorway.

“Oh, Sam! Glad to see you back. Could I talk to you for a minute?” He jerks his head toward his private office, and Sam knows he’s about to get laid off.

He nods and follows Maybourne into the tasteful corner office, noting the discreet closing of the door behind him. It’s been inevitable for a while—he’s been half-assing it for months, and not even bothering to hide it. After everything, he’s not sure he can really summon up the energy to care. The job’s not that important to him.

Maybourne looks him up and down with a surprising degree of concern for a minute. His mouth is pursed like he really doesn’t want to be having this conversation.

Finally, he appears to steel himself.

“Sam, we’re worried you might have a problem with alcohol.”

A laugh escapes before Sam can control it.

“Sorry, what?” he says, stunned.

Maybourne sighs, and proceeds to enumerate all the changes in Sam’s behavior over the last couple of months, his frequent last-minute use of personal time, and now this car crash (Sam had pulled that lie out of his ass when staggering past the curious and alarmed receptionist).

“And trust me Sam,” he finishes. “This is a law firm. We  _ all  _ understand what it’s like to need a drink to escape our problems, but once it gets to the point that it’s your  _ life  _ on the line, it’s time to stop and think about whether it’s worth it.”

“Are you—I mean—” Sam’s mouth twitches, fighting to keep a straight face. “Is this a, a—?”

“I know, I know. It’s hard to admit. Image is everything in our line of work, and nobody wants to be known as the office lush. It’s even harder to acknowledge to yourself that there’s something you can’t control. But you wouldn’t be the first. Here.”

He shoves a pile of information pamphlets into Sam’s unprepared hands.

“Take these. It’s a rehab place out towards Pasadena. Absolutely discreet—they’ve been taking our guys for years.”

“Oh!” Sam catches the brochures before they can hit the ground. “Wow. Um—”

“And listen. Take it from someone who knows. Not everyone is cut out for the particular pressures of this job, and just because you  _ can  _ handle it, doesn’t mean you should. I’ve seen it eat guys like you before—driven guys, who don’t know when to stop. They burn themselves out and end up in an early grave.”

“Uh, yeah. No. I mean, you’re right—”

“Don’t be one of those guys, Sam.”

“No. I mean, I won’t. Thanks.” Strangely touched, he adds, “And—um, I think you’re right. I do have a problem with alcohol, and I’ve already made some arrangements for myself along those lines.”

Maybourne’s obvious discomfort dissolves into relief. “Oh, thank god. I thought you were going to make me keep going. I hate giving these speeches. Every damn year. Now get out of my office, would ya?”

~

Maybourne’s concerns, belated as they are, do serve a purpose in that they bring to Sam’s attention a truth that’s been growing in him for a long time. He isn’t happy here, but that’s something he has the power to change.

It’s time to look ahead to the future and decide what he really wants.

The one thing he knows for sure is that he needs to get out of corporate law. Browsing online for job openings, he tells himself any place will do, but it’s already in the back of his mind that there’s only one place he really has connections these days. And if he could get out of Los Angeles, out of the constant competition and the eighty-hour work weeks?

If he could live within driving distance of Dean?

There are a number of openings on the outskirts of Denver and one out in Boulder, but he knows he can’t, not until he does what he’s been avoiding, and talks to Cas.

Mouth dry and pulse racing, Sam takes out his phone and dials.

“…Sam?”

“Hey, uh, hey, Cas. This is… Sam. You knew that.” He winces.

Cas hums noncommittally. “Is your brother not answering his phone? He’s probably with a customer, but I’ll tell him you called—”

“No, I’d—I’d really like to talk to you. If that’s ok.”

Cas is quiet a moment. Eventually, he says in a cautious tone, “Go ahead.”

“I wanted to apologize,  _ really  _ apologize, for all the shit I pulled in Grand Lake. I mean the stuff I said to you and Dean at the bar, and in the car afterward… and the, the, uh, breaking into your house and lying in wait to kill you thing. That was… shitty.”

Cas’ response is dry. “Shitty would be one word for it.”

“But I know it wasn’t just the attack. It was my whole thought process. It was my assumptions, and my—my arrogance. I wouldn’t have gone off the rails that far if I’d been willing to give you the respect you deserve. I didn’t listen to what you guys were telling me, and I thought I knew better, but I didn’t. At all. I was jealous, and condescending, and I’m so sorry for it. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But, um, more than anything, I wanted to say that I realize, now, how much you’ve been there for Dean. And I wasn’t. And our dad wasn’t, and that’s—that’s amazing of you, and I just, I want to thank you for saving Dean’s life.”

There’s a silence on the other end of the line, and Sam looks down at his hand, which is shaking. He closes it tightly into a fist, and pushes through.

“And the thing is, I always… Even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I always knew that there was a chance that, that, um, that Dean could have died while I was gone—not taking his calls, or—or, that he could’ve been hurt, and counting on me, and I—I didn’t want to think about that, so. But then he did. Almost die, I mean. On a hunt by himself out there. And I wouldn’t even have known. And that’s on me.”

Sam has to stop for a second and rubs his face, trying to pull himself together.

When Cas speaks, his voice has softened. “Dean has an unstoppable yearning to save others, and he tends to throw himself into danger to do it, even when it costs him everything. It’s hard on those of us that love him.”

“Yeah,” Sam breathes gratefully, clinging to the ‘us’ in that statement.

“For what it’s worth, neither he nor I would have blamed you if that had happened. You’re not responsible for his decisions.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just hard.”

“It is,” Cas agrees.

There’s a moment where neither of them speaks, and then Sam says, hesitantly, “I know I don’t have any right to ask this, but if you were willing to give me another chance to start over—to be a brother-in-law, properly? And, and I’m looking for job openings, to maybe move out of California, and open up my time for more hunts and other important things—and if Colorado wouldn’t be too close for you guys—that is, if you didn’t think it was a good idea—”

Cas interrupts, “Of course you should come to Colorado. Your brother misses you.”

Sam breaks into a relieved smile.

~

A year has passed, and the October daytime temperatures in Grand Lake are already in the low-fifties, so the potluck is largely indoors. Charlie and Gilda are already in the living room arranging pillows on the floor, and Benny’s finishing some sort of sausage dish in the kitchen.

Sam is in his second month of part-time work as regional in-house counsel for a credit union out of Boulder County, where he lives a couple hours away. He visits Dean, Cas, and Bobby every few weekends in between road trips for hunts and rescues.

He hunts with partners for safety now, part of the network set up by the clinic—often Garth, or Jo, but more often than not Eileen, who he’s sort of on some kind of trajectory with. Maybe it’ll go somewhere; maybe it won’t. They’ll have to wait and see.

Jess and he are on speaking terms again, not quite cordial but not hating each other either, and he still gets Christmas cards from her sister’s family. There was a little ‘Jess wishes you well’ in the last one, an acknowledgement that they still know each other.

Dean and Cas are having a ‘bring-your-own-cushion’ party, a tradition they’ve maintained on the anniversary of buying their house since the first year, when they had literally nothing but an air mattress and a milk crate to sit on. The movers carrying Cas’ furniture from Granby had been delayed, so they’d spent their first night in the house with almost none of their things.

“Well, except for the dungeon furniture,” Dean grins. “We brought that up ourselves. No need to raise more questions about our sex habits than we had to.”

“Mortuary table,” corrects Cas, popping an olive into his mouth.

“I don’t think most mortuary tables come with chains and cuffs, babe.”

“Honestly, the medical restraints wouldn’t have been that hard to explain. We should’ve left them for the movers and taken the chest with my spell ingredients instead. The looks I got after the lid fell open…”

“Oh, I’ve got to hear this story,” Sam says with a grin. Eileen hands him another O’Doule’s non-alcoholic beer as she sits down next to between him and Charlie, and he thanks her in ASL.

As they laugh and swap stories about their crazy lives, hunters and patients hanging out together, Sam knows that the future is bright.

The end.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a real chapter - just a note.

Hi all,

This isn't a chapter - it's just a heads up. Someone in the comments asked about a prequel showing Dean/Cas getting together and working through their issues, and I thought you/they might be interested in the notes I had toward that idea.

About six months before I started this Sam-centric story, I was working on the werewolf-Dean/doctor-Cas origin story, and I wrote a ton of rough outline before I ultimately gave up and focused on Sam instead. **If you want to see that rough outline, it's posted on page two of the chapter 10 comments section, or page three of the entire work's comments.** You can't miss it -- it's like six full essays' worth of comment-story.

I don't have any plans right now to write it out as a full fic on my own, but I'm open to the idea of discussing a collaboration if someone wants to do something with it! (I mean like, someone who has completed their own fics before and is already fully aware of how much work that would be. We could discuss it, and see if our writing styles/preferences aligned. Just throwing that out there.)

Cheers! <3 

Hopelessheathen

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://hopelessheathen.tumblr.com) / [dreamwidth](https://hopelessheathen57.dreamwidth.org) / [pillowfort](https://pillowfort.social/hopelessheathen)


End file.
